"How to improve web site accessibility and capture new business" Christian Heilmann, Lead Front End Developer Netdecisions February 2004

Why accessibility? Possible legal necessity Easier maintenance and rebranding of the product The “blind millionaire”

How to introduce accessibility? Raise disability awareness throughout the project - designers, developers and sales force. Raise client awareness from the start Separation of Markup, CSS and Scripting Testing, testing, testing

The multi level approach Create the design, identify the components Start the markup, ensure the site is usable without any Scripting or CSS Add the CSS layer to make the site look as it should be Separate the finished (x)HTML document into "components" Add the backend functionality to re- assemble these components. Add a Javascript layer to enhance usability If your web page were a movie, XHTML would be the screenwriter, CSS would be the art director, scripting languages would be the special effects… (Jeffrey Zeldman)

What are the problems we are facing right now? Current web design aesthetics are print design driven (multicolumn layouts, fixed sizes) Web development is considered graphic work rather than document design Browsers and Screen Reader technology implementation is still dodgy Content Management Systems, WYSIWYG editors and backends create invalid, non- maintainable code Accessibility myths

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