Posts Tagged: accessibility

Accessibility Hack #3: Testing Colours to Enhance Readability

This is a crosspost of http://dotgov.com According to the University of Washington’s Department of Ophthalmology, 2.8 million Americans have colour blindness, which can express itself in many variations and degrees of severity. Colour perception problems are important considerations when developing web sites to ensure that all users have access to the content and the functionalityRead… Read more »

An Approach to Accessibility

As you may have heard last week, Google announced that they have added ‘Auto-Captions’ for all videos on YouTube. Google’s hope is to increase its user base and has chosen to focus its attention on accessibility with hopes that users with certain disabilities will leverage the site and find it useful. The reality is thatRead… Read more »

How To – Accessibility Hack #2: Using Headings to Improve Navigation

This is a crosspost of dotgov.com In his review of New York City’s website, the esteemed web accessibility expert Jim Thatcher docked the site points for not having headings, which assist readers in navigating the content. WebAIM’s Screen Reader User Survey found that headings are the primary mechanism for finding information within a page. ARead… Read more »

The Open Government Directive & Accessibility Shortcomings

After reading GCN’s article ‘GSA takes a fast, free approach to Web dialogue tool‘ I decided to take a look at the tool in question, IdeaScale, to see what the buzz was all about. The article explains that GSA joins several Federal departments/agencies already using IdeaScale including the White House, Federal Communications Commission (FCC), andRead… Read more »

Accessibility Hack #1: Captioning Online Video

This is a crosspost of dotgov.com. Author: Glenda Watson Meet Karen Putz – a deaf mom of three deaf and hard of hearing teenagers. Her husband is also deaf. On top of being a busy mom, Karen is a sales manager for videophones and relay services for individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing.Read… Read more »

The Accessibility Verdict: NYC.gov

This is a crosspost of http://dotgov.com. Author: Jim Thatcher I am looking for a surprise. It would be so gratifying to open up a government web site, any government website, and be impressed with its accessibility. The New York City site isn’t that site. In fact, the accessibility of the New York City site isRead… Read more »

The Accessibility Verdict: DC.gov

This is a crosspost of http://dotgov.com. Author: Jim Thatcher. Jim Thatcher, one of the godfathers of Section 508, reviews Government websites on Web Accessibility. In this article, Jim verdicts on the website of Washington DC, the seat of President Obama’s Open Government. Sometimes technologies like Flash or JavaScript complicate the job of making web sitesRead… Read more »

Why Web Accessibility is More Than a Legal Obligation

This is a crosspost of http://dotgov.com. Author: Glenda Watson Hyatt Utter the phrase “web accessibility” to a group of web designers and watch eyes immediately glaze over. Thoughts rapidly surface of how alt attributes, relative font sizes, audio transcripts and other technical requirements impede their creativity and add to their workload. However, the thoughts thatRead… Read more »