Personally I don't go out of my way to do anything special. I design the site as it comes and if some people can't access it - tough luck. There is no point in spending any additional time or money in buying specialist tools for people who are challenged in some form! Some people on certain forums call me dragon because of my no nonsense views and I don't normally let them down!.
--- On Thu, 18/8/11, Mike Kear <[email protected]> wrote: > How to the rest of you a/b people > (i.e. able bodied) cater to users with > various forms of disability? > > Up until recently, I've tended to rely on keeping my code > to standards, > eliminating tables except for their proper purpose of > tabulating data, and > hoping that will give the accessibility level > required. Do you go to the > step of accessing your sites with JAWS or something similar > to see how the > site works for users with screen readers? > > I remember in the 1990s when I was working at Australian > Consumers > Association (choice.com.au) we had someone come and > bring his PC with JAWS. > The web team all sat in the boardroom getting ever more > glum looks on our > faces as we saw to our horror how terrible our new design > was for this poor > guy. We thought we'd got a terrific new design, and > were about to launch > it, when he did this demo for us. We had > to go back and recode everything. > This was before anyone was talking about standards though - > it was back when > the normally accepted method of laying out pages was to use > tables, and > buttons were nearly always images. I remember being > astounded at how fast > he was moving around the page, even though we'd unwittingly > designed an > obstacle course of humungous proportions for him. > > Our anguish at the time resulted in a far better web site, > and convinced me > to pay attention to standards and accessibility ever > since. > > But now I'm wondering if simply sticking to standards is > enough? > > What do you all think? Do you include JAWS in your > site testing? > > ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [email protected] *******************************************************************
