http://www.communis.co.uk/blog Notes from the sharp end of web accessiblity Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:45:10 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The W3C Web accessibility Initiative recently published "Contacting Organizations about Inaccessible Websites". It walks through steps, provides lots of tips, and includes sample e-mails. We like it very much. A draft of the document was available in August last year, so we asked a friendly web user to follow the guidance ... http://www.communis.co.uk/blog/2010-02-02-how-to-complain-about-inaccessible-websites Our new case studies are available from the W3C! They seek to demonstrate the business case for accessibility, taking Legal & General, Tesco, CNET and others as examples. These case studies draw together a number of authoritative sources together into a single place, in a format that demonstrates clear business returns. Legal ... http://www.communis.co.uk/blog/2010-01-04-business-case-for-accessibility Accessibility is a critical component of websites... Opening line of Google for Webmasters Tutorial: Crawling and Indexing Having been prodded (gently, but insistently) by Shawn Henry over at the W3C's web accessibility initiative, I am now hesitantly putting together this article on the overlap between the charms of web accessibility and the ... http://www.communis.co.uk/blog/2009-08-06-seo-and-accessibility-overlap There are a lot of changes between Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) v1 and WCAG v2. One of the most important additions is guidance on making sites easier to navigate for keyboard-only users who have good vision. Most sighted keyboard only users are using either Internet Explorer or Firefox, both of ... http://www.communis.co.uk/blog/2009-06-09-visibility-of-the-keyboard-focus-good-and-bad Skip links are a way to allow a keyboard user to get to the main content on a web page quickly, without having to read through or tab through a whole bunch of menu items every time that they load that page.  Given current technology, they are a level A ... http://www.communis.co.uk/blog/2009-06-02-skip-links-chrome-safari-and-added-wai-aria Now that WCAG2.0 is out there and being used day-to-day, time to update all your links. To refer to and link to the latest completed version that is the recommended Web Standard, do not include a number, for example: Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG/ User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG/ Web Content Accessibility ... http://www.communis.co.uk/blog/2009-03-06-referencing-w3c-accessibility-guidelines We get asked this question a lot. shouldiusetablesforlayout.com seems to sum up the general view of both SEO and accessibility specialists. http://www.communis.co.uk/blog/2009-02-17-should-i-use-tables-for-layout The Priority Trust gives physically disabled children and young people greater independence by funding mobility equipment and sharing experiences; helping them to participate in society as independent, mature and responsible individuals and achieve their potential. Communis are very pleased to have been chosen to develop their new web site, which can ... http://www.communis.co.uk/blog/2009-02-05-priority-trust-web-site-goes-live WCAG2.0 has arrived! The bouncing baby new de facto accessibility standard arrived into the world yesterday - December the 11th, 2008. Being the accessibility obsessives we are, we eagerly tore open the metaphorical wrapping paper and started to play with it without reading the instructions. Unlike previous versions released, this is ... http://www.communis.co.uk/blog/2008-12-12-wcag-2-test-drive WCAG2.0 is coming into force this Christmas. WCAG2.0 is a new set of accessibility guidelines from the W3C that supersede their current WCAG1.0 requirements. WCAG2.0 has been a while coming - it resolves many of the ambiguities and historical anomalies in WCAG1.0, and takes into account the development in web technologies ... http://www.communis.co.uk/blog/2008-11-14-wcag20-coming-this-christmas