Web site bar charts often consist of a fancy image exported from Microsoft Excel. If you are lucky someone wrote an alt-text explaining what the chart is about. It is time to stop doing that. In this article I show you how you can make an accessible bar chart without sacrificing visual pizzazz.
Archive for the 'General' Category
Creating accessible bar charts
Browsing habits of screen reader users
A while ago I read the article “Observing Users Who Listen to Web Sites“. In that article the authors report that visually impaired users scan web pages with their ears instead of reading them top to bottom. This may not come as a surprise to you if you read Jakob Nielsen’s “How Users Read on the Web” back in 1997. Recently I have had the opportunity to study a number of screen reader users and my observations are similar.
Proposal for an Accessible Captcha
You have probably been subjected to a captcha last time you registered for a free e-mail account somewhere. Most likely you were presented with a funny looking image in which you were supposed to find a squence of numbers or letters which you had to copy to a textfield to prove that you are a human and not a machine.
Imagine if you could not see the image. What would you write in the text field? The phrase “you inaccessible idiots” spring to mind…
Standards-wielding maniacs
The advent of web standards has created a new breed of self-proclaimed experts. Wielding the W3C online validator tool they attack webmasters, site owners and and anyone without the Xhtml logo in the page footer. However, changing your website to make it pass thorugh the W3C validator does not guarantee accessibility.
Working with content to increase accessibility
Many assume that accessibility is all about following the latest web standards. While following standards will increase accessibility for a website it does not automatically make it accessible for all your visitors. You can do a lot for accessibility by making sure that your content is understandable and comprehensive.
Read more about Working with content to increase accessibility