Categories
review

Is the Olympic Games website accessible?

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games’ official web site is now web accessible, or is it? In the article Those who can’t see can surf, it appears the answer is yes. In the article Beijing Olympics: Revisiting The Errors Of The Past (E-Access Blog), it appears the answer is no. But, as with any website, there’s room for improvement. Here are some of my findings after a little closer look.

Improvements:

  • Need to add skip-to links.
  • Remove bullet characters in two unordered lists.
  • “Schedules by Sport” should be marked up as a heading.
  • Unordered list for language selection has extra line items; a heading is needed; should be towards top of content.
  • “More” links should each be more descriptive.

Good:

  • Turn off JS and it looks great.
  • Overall, web standards are used fairly well.
Categories
event expert podcast validation

Podcast #65: Top 10, SXSW, Nikita, and Joe

Dennis and Ross discuss a variety of topics including web accessibility news and events, a top 10 list, SXSW 2009, Nikita the Spider validator, and our friend Joe Dolson.

Download Web Axe Episode 65 (Top 10, SXSW, Nikita, and Joe)

Chatter

News

Top Ten Tips?

Ten Top accessibility developer tips from Epic (UK)

SXSW Panels 2009

Nikita the Spider

Joe Dolson

Categories
testing

50 Useful Tools for Evaluating Your Website

Some good web accessibility tools are listed in the post Is Your Site Hot or Not? 50 Useful Tools for Evaluating Your Website. Look under the heading “Accessibility & Usability”. Other good tools are listed for SEO, stats, performance, and code validation.

Categories
podcast wcag

Boagworld and Lauke on WCAG 2.0

In Boagword podcast #120 (June 4, 2008), Paul Boag speaks with Patrick Lauke on WCAG 2.0. It’s a lengthy discussion that’s definitely worth a listen.

Categories
administrative

Excellent web site re-launch from Web Axe listener!

Therese Nielsen, a veteran Web Axe podcast listener, has been a major contributor to the relaunch of the University of Michigan’s Services for Students With Disabilities web site earlier this year. The following is a portion of a message she sent:

I just wanted to let you know that listening to Web Axe helped me out a great deal as I created the site!…It has received a lot of really positive feedback, and a visually disabled student who is reviewing UM sites for accessibility recently raved about how much she likes using the site, calling it ‘wonderful’.

Thank you for the kind words Therese and congrats on the fine work!