Ask an Expert About Web Site Accessibility

Joe Clark is an expert on handicapped accesibility for movies, TV, the WWW, and other media. The launch party for his new book, Building Accessible Websites , is Dec. 3, which is also the International Day of Disabled Persons, so this a perfect time to ask questions about how to make a Web site -- or a TV show or movie -- accessible. As usual, we'll send 10 of the highest-moderated questions to Joe, and run his answers verbatim when we get them back.

Comments

Re:Accessibility for the Mentally Handicapped?

[TheMidget]

I think this is not an issue. Many sites can indeed be viewed with Internet Explorer, thus this particular kind of disability is very well catered for...

Re:Accessible Slashdot?

[Xaoswolf]

I'm guessing that the typo's on slashdot lead to some interesting stuff comming out of your speakers if you use any of those text to speach programs.

Yuck...

[pubjames]

The cover of this guy's Web Site Accessibility book is bizzarely reminiscent of that goatsx guy. Ugh.

http://joeclark.org/book/images/bawcover25.jpg

Re:market for web developers

[OrangeSpyderMan]

I have good relations with the principles of an accesibility testing firm and believe the businesses can compliment each other well.

--Mmm, my, your web site is nice!

--Why thank you, sir, I find your testing well up to scratch!

--Good news, though it is nothing compared to the quality of your output!

--Please, you flatter me - your reputation is well deserved in your specific domain, there's no hiding it!

Etc... Should lead to a healthy collaboration, though not necessarily terribly productive. :-)

Re:How far should it go?

[Waffle Iron]

Talking about Flash, a first step would be to provide a courtesy "Skip intro" link

Most times, if I don't see a "skip intro" link when some stupid fluff starts fading in from black, I make my own: the "back arrow". On to the next site.

Re:How far should it go?

[Alien Being]

"Macromedia Flash has integrated many accessibility features..."

Ball Street Journal:

Macromedia has won patents on a new technlogy which enables wider accessibility to information on websites.

Chief technology officer, Hassan ben Sober, said "By eliminating unnecessary multimedia content and presenting the most relevent facts in 'FlashText tm' we can help the web realize its full potential"