Topic: Accessibility for everybody

Hi, guys. Listen to me!

My book says that in USA law provides web designer making their web site accessable for everybody who gets disability. I wonder how to make a web site for blind people.

My book said that image tag should include <alt>. I wonder what happens.
Any advice, tips, appreciated.

Hiroki Kozai

Hiya Hiroki...I think this one belongs in the HTML forum...so I'm moving it...

I know that there is such a law about government related sites. I'm not sure that it applies to *all* sites, but there have been some lawsuits over commercial sites, where the prosecutors claimed that the sites failed to meet some old Accessability Act that I forget the name of. That old law was made before web sites were developed, and it's unclear whether it actually pertains to them.

Nonetheless, accessability is a valuable and important quality for a web page to have; especially because it makes you look better as a designer. Alt tags are a good start:

<img src="horse.jpg" alt="A large brown horse">

So that blind users (for instance) can know what the page contains without actually seeing it visually.

Another way to help the blind use your site is to write it so that all the text is in order. If you read your HTML from top to bottom, it should all make sense.

Dive Into Accessibility is a good explanation of how you can make your site easier for disabled people to use.

Copy and pasting in my answer from the GN (lazy me??):

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Hiroki: Best place to start is our Accessibility section of the links where there are great resources on this kind of thing:

http://development.gurusnetwork.com/links/177/

Basically on the specific question adding ALT to IMG allows the machine reading the image tag to read a piece of text describing the image out to the blind person viewing the site.

You shouldn't just concentrate on blind people although they have the largest 'lobby' on this kind of thing.

I have added a subsection to the Accessibility node on Accessibility Statements and that should prove interesting - have a look at the Trinity College one which outlines the issues and laws and how they are addressed.

http://development.gurusnetwork.com/links/460/

Emps

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Emps

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