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Web Developer Resource Index: Accessibility

Web Accessibility is the application of design methods and practices so that Web content is available to all, and in particular those individuals with disabilities. By designing for accessibility, the developer not only gains a wider audience, but also a greater appreciation for their efforts. The intention of the Web is to be a global information space. By restricting access, the site owner, author or developer is defeating this purpose.

Contrary to what some people believe, designing Web content for both accessibility and aesthetic appeal is entirely possible. It can be a complex process however, and takes some rethinking on the part of the designer. Remember that disability does not simply mean blindness or vision impairment, it includes people with cognitive problems, deafness, mobility impairments and so on. In some locations, or for certain classes of Web sites, accessibility may even be mandated by law.

The best place to start before attempting to convert or build an accessible Web site is with standards and good practices. Make sure your markup is valid, and that you are separating the structure and content of the design from its presentation using CSS and other tools. This will not only help when you tackle the job of making it accessible, it will make your site easier to maintain and improve as well.

One tool available to help you is the Cynthia Says™ Accessibility Report, which you can test out on loadaverageZero.

Updated: Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 @ 1:53 AM EDT

Internet:WWW:Design and Development:Accessibility {0}(26)[36]

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1.Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

These guidelines explain how to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities. The guidelines are intended for all Web content developers (page authors and site designers) and for developers of authoring tools. [70]
★★★★★
URI:http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/
Author:
Wendy Chisholm
[1]
Reviewed:Tuesday, April 5th, 2005 @ 4:29 PM EDT
by:
Douglas Clifton

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines accessibility design developer w3c
2.Skills for Access

If this site isn't a testament to beautiful design, and advocating, demonstrating and teaching accessibility, then I don't know of a better example. Also covers multimedia accessibility: Flash, Shockwave and external viewers. Great resource, thanks RJ. [1209]
★★★★★
URI:http://skillsforaccess.org.uk/
Author:
Skills for Access Team
[1]
Reviewed:Friday, May 20th, 2005 @ 6:20 AM EDT
by:
Douglas Clifton

Skills for Access accessibility design flash
3.Juicy Studio: Accessibility Articles

Developers put a lot of effort into ensuring their sites can be viewed in outdated browsers, but all too often ignore newer browsers, or worse still, a whole range of visitors. Accessibility means access to information for all. [94]
★★★★★
URI:http://juicystudio.com/articles.php?page=0&category=1
Author:
Gez Lemon
[3]
Reviewed:Sunday, May 1st, 2005 @ 2:39 AM EDT
by:
Douglas Clifton

Juicy Studio: Accessibility Articles accessibility browser developer
4.Building Accessible Websites

An online serialization of the classic book on accessible Web site design. [92]
★★★★★
URI:http://joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/
Author:
Joe Clark
[2]
Reviewed:Wednesday, April 6th, 2005 @ 3:29 AM EDT
by:
Douglas Clifton

Building Accessible Websites accessibility design ebook
5.Evaluating Website Accessibility

A three-part series of articles targeting non-experts. Part one covers some background and suggests some tools, part two presents a list of checkpoints and how to use the tools, and part three explains what cannot be achieved through software automation. [1688]
★★★★☆
URI:http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200604/evaluating_website_acces...
Author:
Roger Johansson
[4]
Reviewed:Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 @ 12:10 AM EDT
by:
Douglas Clifton

Evaluating Website Accessibility accessibility
6.Guidelines for Building an Accessible Web Site

Explains and discusses the rationale and technical requirements for making information published on the Web available to as wide an audience as possible and should help any organisation increase the audience who can access their information and services. [1666]
★★★★☆
URI:http://www.mcu.org.uk/articles/accessguidelines.html
Author:
James Byrne
[1]
Reviewed:Wednesday, March 8th, 2006 @ 4:35 PM EST
by:
Douglas Clifton

Guidelines for Building an Accessible Web Site accessibility reference w3c web
7.Color Contrast Analyzer

A Firefox extension that reveals the color contrast of all elements in the DOM. If you evaluate Web sites for color contrast, this extension will be useful for saving you time, and also takes out the guesswork required to determine which colors to test. [1642]
★★★★☆
URI:http://juicystudio.com/article/colour-contrast-analyser-firefox-exten...
Author:
Gez Lemon
[3]
Reviewed:Sunday, February 12th, 2006 @ 5:49 PM EST
by:
Douglas Clifton

Color Contrast Analyzer accessibility dom extension firefox
8.Firefox Textsize Extension

A simple Firefox extension that adds the functionality of the browser's standard text size menu as a toolbar button, for easier user access. Updated to add buttons that increase, decrease and reset the text size. Version 0.4 supports Firefox 1.5b and up. [1562]
★★★★☆
URI:http://www.splintered.co.uk/experiments/70/
Author:
Patrick Lauke
[4]
Reviewed:Sunday, November 27th, 2005 @ 1:30 PM EST
by:
Douglas Clifton

Firefox Textsize Extension accessibility extension firefox mozilla
9.Web Accessibility Tools

A collection of tools for the development of accessible Web content, from a collaboration of some of the world's leading accessibility practitioners. Founded by Accessible Information Solutions, Infoaxia, the Paciello Group, Wrong HTML, and Juicy Studio. [1530]
★★★★☆
URI:http://wat-c.org/
Author:
WAT Consortium
[1]
Reviewed:Sunday, September 18th, 2005 @ 3:59 PM EDT
by:
Pamela Berman

Web Accessibility Tools accessibility developer extension firefox ie opera toolbar web
10.Evaluating Web Sites for Accessibility with Firefox

Learn to take full advantage of the powerful Web Developer Firefox extension for such tasks as such as checking for images without alt attributes, making sure markup and stylesheet(s) are valid, testing pages with CSS and Javascript disabled, and more... [1506]
★★★★☆
URI:http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue44/lauke/
Author:
Patrick Lauke
[4]
Reviewed:Sunday, August 21st, 2005 @ 9:07 PM EDT
by:
Douglas Clifton

Evaluating Web Sites for Accessibility with Firefox accessibility css extension firefox javascript markup validator
11.Web Accessibility Toolbar

An awesome toolbar for developers allowing them to examine Web pages under Internet Explorer for various aspects of accessibility. Contains links to a lot of accessibility resources. Version 1.2 released Oct, 2005 with many enhancements and improvements. [1386]
★★★★☆
URI:http://visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=614
Author:
Accessible Information Solutions
[1]
Reviewed:Sunday, November 6th, 2005 @ 12:47 PM EST
by:
Pamela Berman

Web Accessibility Toolbar accessibility ie resources toolbar
12.FoxyVoice

This free screen reader extension for Firefox is a whole lot easier to install than Fire Vox. There are no options settings, and unlike unlike Fire Vox, chunks of text are not highlighted and page elements are not identified as text is being read. [1385]
★★★★☆
URI:http://foxyvoice.kenche.info/
Author:
Kenneth Che
[1]
Reviewed:Saturday, July 9th, 2005 @ 3:16 PM EDT
by:
Pamela Berman

FoxyVoice accessibility extension firefox tts
13.Fire Vox

A free screen reader for the Firefox browser. Options include highlighting chunks of text as it is read and the ability to remap command keys. A menu of submenus can be used to navigate to headings, links, images, form elements, access keys, and frames. [1370]
★★★★☆
URI:http://webspace.utexas.edu/chencl1/clc-4-tts/
Author:
Charles L. Chen
[1]
Reviewed:Monday, July 4th, 2005 @ 12:16 AM EDT
by:
Pamela Berman

Fire Vox accessibility extension firefox java javascript tts
14.ATF: Not 'Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms'

In response to WaSP's new ATF (Accessibility Task Force), Joe has posted this list of things he hopes can be accomplished by the group. Many of the members are represented here, including Derek Featherstone, Gez Lemon, Patrick Lauke, and Ian Lloyd. [1344]
★★★★☆
URI:http://blog.fawny.org/2005/06/25/atf/
Author:
Joe Clark
[2]
Reviewed:Monday, June 27th, 2005 @ 6:21 PM EDT
by:
Douglas Clifton

ATF: Not 'Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms' accessibility standards web
15.Developing sites for users with Cognitive Disabilities

"When people think about the accessibility of Web content, there's a tendency to concentrate on people with visual impairments. People with cognitive impairments and learning difficulties are often overlooked" [1234]
★★★★☆
URI:http://juicystudio.com/article/cognitive-impairment.php
Author:
Roger Hudson
[1]
Reviewed:Tuesday, May 24th, 2005 @ 11:36 AM EDT
by:
Douglas Clifton

Developing sites for users with Cognitive Disabilities accessibility developer disability
16.Ten questions for Derek Featherstone

Like many Web professionals (including myself), Derek has a background in something other than just technology. His is education, and now he's an accessibility consultant. In this interview with Russ Weakley he shares his insights on the topic. [1227]
★★★★☆
URI:http://webstandardsgroup.org/features/derek-featherstone.cfm
Author:
Russ Weakley
[7]
Reviewed:Monday, May 23rd, 2005 @ 10:14 AM EDT
by:
Douglas Clifton

Ten questions for Derek Featherstone accessibility standards
17.Ten questions for Joe Clark

Russ interviews Joe Clark, an influential accessibility expert and consultant, on such topics as captioning and subtitling, opening new windows (please avoid!), skip navigation, title attributes, forms, tables and more. [1126]
★★★★☆
URI:http://webstandardsgroup.org/features/joe-clark.cfm
Author:
Russ Weakley
[7]
Reviewed:Wednesday, May 11th, 2005 @ 8:20 PM EDT
by:
Douglas Clifton

Ten questions for Joe Clark accessibility
18.Accessify.com: Attractive, Accessible Web Sites

Or, disproving the myth of ugly. An article discussing how to achieve both. With both good and bad examples. Many more resources on this site including tutorials, news and reviews, and discussions. [1044]
★★★★☆
URI:http://www.accessify.com/articles/attractive-accessible-sites.asp
Author:
Ian Lloyd
[1]
Reviewed:Monday, April 25th, 2005 @ 1:57 AM EDT
by:
Douglas Clifton

Accessify.com: Attractive, Accessible Web Sites accessibility design
19.Web Accessibility Articles

A series of articles starting with an Accessibility Primer, and many others including topics such as accesskeys and tabindex, JAWS, and weighted lists. [1040]
★★★★☆
URI:http://www.wats.ca/articles/
Author:
Derek Featherstone
[1]
Reviewed:Tuesday, May 31st, 2005 @ 1:58 PM EDT
by:
Douglas Clifton

Web Accessibility Articles accessibility web
20.Designing and Understanding Accessible WWW Pages

The 5 first steps for designing accessible Web sites. Those who design and construct web sites can do a great deal to ensure universal access to their sites. [83]
★★★★☆
URI:http://ataccess.org/rresources/webaccess.html
Author:
Staff
[1]
Reviewed:Tuesday, April 5th, 2005 @ 10:53 PM EDT
by:
Douglas Clifton

Designing and Understanding Accessible WWW Pages accessibility design
21.Bobby Approved

This free service will allow you to test web pages and help expose and repair barriers to accessibility and encourage compliance with existing accessibility guidelines, such as Section 508 and the W3C's WCAG. [82]
★★★★☆
URI:http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/
Author:
Staff
[3]
Reviewed:Tuesday, April 5th, 2005 @ 10:45 PM EDT
by:
Douglas Clifton

Bobby Approved accessibility
22.Dive Into Accessibility

A comprehensive 30 day guide to making your website more accessible. [81]
★★★★☆
URI:http://diveintoaccessibility.org/
Author:
Mark Pilgrim
[6]
Reviewed:Tuesday, April 5th, 2005 @ 10:09 PM EDT
by:
Douglas Clifton

Dive Into Accessibility accessibility
23.How People with Disabilities Use the Web

This document provides an introduction to use of the Web by people with disabilities. It illustrates some of their requirements when using Web sites and Web-based applications. [80]
★★★★☆
URI:http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/PWD-Use-Web/
Author:
Judy Brewer
[1]
Reviewed:Tuesday, April 5th, 2005 @ 9:54 PM EDT
by:
Douglas Clifton

How People with Disabilities Use the Web accessibility disability w3c
24.Digital Web: Accessibility

Contributed articles by various recognized design, usability and accessibility professionals. [79]
★★★★☆
URI:http://digital-web.com/topics/accessibility/
Author:
Community
[19]
Reviewed:Monday, April 18th, 2005 @ 9:28 PM EDT
by:
Douglas Clifton

Digital Web: Accessibility accessibility design usability
25.Cynthia Says™

International Center for Disability Resources on the Internet (ICDRI), the Internet Society - Disability and Special Needs Chapter, and HiSoftware Company collaborate to provide cost-free educational resource for Web Site accessibility testing. [78]
★★★★☆
URI:http://hisoftware.com/press/cynthia.html
Author:
Cynthia Waddell
[1]
Reviewed:Wednesday, May 11th, 2005 @ 10:06 PM EDT
by:
Douglas Clifton

Cynthia Says™ accessibility disability
26.Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards

Section 508 requires that Federal agencies' electronic and information technology is accessible to people with disabilities. [77]
★★★★☆
URI:http://section508.gov/
Author:
Staff
[3]
Reviewed:Friday, May 27th, 2005 @ 5:40 PM EDT
by:
Douglas Clifton

Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards accessibility