Accessibility

Chicago's world-renowned architecture is literally the history of urban industrial growth in the last century. Our city has buildings in every style, starting with the Burnham and Root projects like the Rookery and Monadnock buildings and continuing through Mies van der Rohe (IBM Plaza, 330 N. Wabash) and his disciples at Skidmore Owings and Merrill (Willis Tower [originally Sears Tower], John Hancock Tower). However, there are architectural features of our city that are renowned and notorious, and their history can be a parable for our work as people who manufacture the web.

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A graph from the article showing disabilities reported: Read the full article

I recently read a fascinating survey of 1000 blind and visually impaired internet users. It's a long article but is largely graphs and data tables – so is easily consumed. If you want the short version, check out the comments and conclusion.

The most surprising parts for me were;

• Websites that auto-play music (MySpace most notably) are extremely difficult because the sound makes it hard for the user to listen to screen readers. Further, the flash music player is usually inaccessible for screen reader users, so the music can not be stopped and the page is completely unusable.
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CivicActions endeavors that our websites be usable. Usable implies accessible, since a user with special needs can not use an inaccessible site. In this article I discuss techniques that every web developer, themer and front-end html coder should have in their toolkit. These are the low-hanging fruit, the simple and inexpensive techniques, that make a big difference for internet users with restricted access, from user with low bandwidth internet connections, to users with poor eyesight. We're not just talking about the Googlebot and spiders here.

What is accessiblity?

Google search provides many definitions of accessibility. Perhaps the best and most complete for the context of web development is from McGill University's website. Emphasis is mine:

accessibility: the ability to view web pages on different browsers and multiple platforms; especially concerns individuals with disabilities — that they have access to and be able to use information and data in a manner comparable to individuals without disabilities…

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