Accessibility
Some designers strive for accessibility and some could care less; they're both lucky.
The primary impact of inaccessibility is on people who don't have much of a choice like
- The visually impaired.
- Persons with readability issues.
The inability of a page to render as something it should, also impacts on business;
- What may appear with one browser, may render nothing on another.
- This can be quite a surprise!
- What may appear to be an attractive page, could be something visually jumbled and "incoherent" almost, to a person with a older browser version.
- It goes on.......
Some common sense.
The Phonetic Alphabet was designed as a linguistic standard to cut simple misinterpretations. Likewise, for the early morse code, and even modern computer communication protocols and relationships.
It been long understood that any broad social perfection is an ideology of a dreamer; however advances in technology cannot be made without some precision in particular areas.
With respect to Web Design though, it can be noticed that any effort is better is none. Why? Because it often follows that the basics in anything, is a necessary step to any further evolution. It would mean that you don't exclude it and are conscious of it! Should it ever become something compulsory, well then.
Some steps perhaps.
- Visit the standard ones for valid html.
- And C.S.S. (cascading style sheets ) http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
- Run your pages url through http://www.sitereportcard.com
- You should note some difference between this and http://validator.w3.org/ with regard to the summary attribute.
If it happens to be your first time to validate a document, any or all of the above may seem like a bunch of garbled and inconsistent rubbish!. Thats why it can be sometimes helpful to use different validators, as each my help to better define the precise cause of the error. A mistake, early in a document may produce additional errors due to cascading effects. Unless something is blatantly obvious, start at the first mistake.
With dynamically (content management systems and various other portal, scripts created websites, it can sometimes be diffult to locate the precise location of any errors. Try to find out which files / templates, are called to generate the page.
A useful tool for anyone who wishes to take accessibility to another level is at http://webxact3.watchfire.com/report.asp
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