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Access keys can conflict with short cuts already defined by the browser. See this entry at accessify.com about the problem. Also read this article.

Opera does.

Hit F12 and you get a quick menu with a bunch of handy toggles.

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I've been reading Zeldman's book Designing for Web Standards at safari.oreilly.com and it addresses this quite well. Safari and Mac IE 5.2 are very compliant to standards moreso than any version of IE on Windows, so it's not as big a deal now as it once was during the browser war era. Yeesh what a mess that was.

If you can move away from using old pre-war coding practices you'll be a step ahead in the fight. Check out these sites for more info on coding pages that look good in any browser on any platform:

• The Web Standards Project

• Zeldman's site of course.

• A List Apart

• Netscape's DevEdge is a great source of info.

• Validate your source.

• Validate your CSS.

• Another html validator.

• Accessibility is not only a good thing it's the right thing, especially if you ever make a government site.

• Bluerobot has some pre-cooked layouts to cut your teeth on.

Designing with XHTML and CSS means not leaving anybody out. From Web-enabled phones to IE 6 to text only browsers like lynx or links you'll only need to write your code once. I say do away with javascript browser detection scripts and write once, run (almost) anywhere!

There is a last resort you can go to if you must. Macromedia Flash looks the same in any browser provided you have the proper plugin. :) Although that is not my recommended solution.

But once this standard is in place, I see these interests groups going around and sueing everyone they can get their hands on.

This is already happening.

• The RNIB is acting on behalf of people in the UK
• SOCOG was fined 20,000AUD in Australia for failing to provide an accessible website.
• MARTA lost a lawsuit under the ADA.
• AOL, Claire's, Bank of America and Wells Fargo have all settled when sued over the accessibility of their websites.

I'd really like to see a simple plug-in that adds only one visible element to the standard interface, a smiley/frownie face, ala iCab [www.icab.de], that indicates whether the HTML of the page actually validates to the DTD declared in the document itself. Clicking on a frownie face would bring up a list of validation errors.

There is a simple solution, and it is to use JS favelets that connect to the W3 server with the URL details. Basically, you need a link to a JS link, such as this: javascript:window.open('http://validator.w3.org/ch eck?uri='+location);void%200 (and I'm just copying and pasteing from my website). You can put this in the navigation bar, and off you go :-)

There are plenty of bookmarklets which are quite useful. Some of them:

• Accessibility favelets
• Slimeland favelets (show tables and divs)

• I am sure there are many more cool uses around

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  Free as in freedom

I have read several comments about how making a site accessible is not a difficult thing to do, but making an accessible site halfway interesting looking appears to be something else. It is possible though - the company I work for full time is committed to achieveing both these aims (Nationwide). Also, I have started a site called Accessify which as well as promoting the whole accessibility thing, it is doing so to developers and very much with the view that ugliness isn't necessarily automatic - I've had a number of really nice comments about how good the site looks. Anyway, perhaps you'd care to take a look and see for yourself? Accessify - accessibility information, tips, tools and articles