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Accessible Advice on Accessibility
Paraphrased advice from an article by Ginny Redish,
Combined newsletter:
"Achieve!"
Vol 1, Number 2, "Usability Interface," Vol 9,
Issue 4, April 2003
- Overall Design: Imagine reading your page by reading ONLY
the linked text.
- Text-Only: Do not make a special, duplicate instance of
pages for text-only.
- Formatting
- Use a style sheet; more precisely,
don't put styles directly in a page (local styles)
and don't use
manual
formatting.
- Use relative font sizes (+1, -1, 70%)
- Use standard HTML heading identifiers (H1, etc.)
- Use lots of headings
- Links
- Use up to 50 links per page; more becomes burdensome
to people 'listening' to the links.
- Don't start a list of links with an identical word
- Put key words close to the
beginning of link phrases.
- If necessary, put the key word first in links and headings
by following it with a hyphen. "Dogs- Hunting."
- Use a link at the top of the page with the exact
words, "Skip
to Main Content" so that screen reader programs
can let blind users avoid listening to the repetitive
links at
the top
of every page.
- Ensure that links in images have text equivalents.
- Test your links, particularly intra-page links, in
a screen reader program (Jaws, Window-Eyes) to make sure
the reader
doesn't restart at the top of the page.
- Use intra-page links for long pages.
- Wording
- Err on the side of separating compound or hyphenated
words... screen readers are more likely to pronounce
them properly.
- Use special tags for acronyms and abbreviations: <ACRONYM>
and <ABBR>.
- Do not
use links
that say simply "Click
Here."
- ALT Tags
- Write meaningful Alt tags
- Err on the side of making Alt tags identical to the
corresponding linked text
- For repetitive, decorative items such as bullets, use
empty Alt tags: Alt="" is OK, but Alt=" " (a space character)
might make more sense.
- Forms and Data Entry:
- Don't put a lot of text on form pages; provide separate
pages for information and forms
- Do not put a lot of links or content "above" a form
in a page.
- To convey field information, use only the field labels,
not intervening text.
- Use an accessibility checker
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