Call me picky, but it sure bothers me when web page articles about web accessibility are not accessible themselves. Talk about bad credibility…
For example, the article Web Accessibility. . . Making your Pages Friendly to People with Disabilities is dreadful. Just by glancing at the main text, several issues are apparent:
- Insufficient color contrast. That dark gray text on a black background just don’t work!
- Text size is too small; text may be difficult to resize in some browsers. Absolute sizing (pixels) are used in the CSS instead of relative sizing (ems, percentage).
- No sub headings in the content, and the content is not divided into “manageable groups”.
- The links are not linked–just written out; and with obnoxious spaces also. For example: Academy of Web Specialists (http://www . onlinewebtraining.com / courses.html)
Actually, I think this article is just a bunch of advertising and SEO garbage. I left a comment saying so; let’s see if they approve it…
6 replies on “Web Accessibility Articles not Accessible”
It’s also incredulous when podcasts on accessibility are totally inaccessible because they don’t provide a transcript…
Dennis, agreed that the site is terrible, but it really isn’t a good example to base your point on.
I agree that some article publishing sites are dire, but often that’s all they do – publish articles. The site you mention looks like a scraper site that’s republished an article by Robin Nobles. And it has part of the blurb from one of Andy Clarke’s workshop, which seems to be popular on link farming sites.
Funny how this post drew two comments so quickly, while other seemingly more important posts get no responses!
To anonymous: So true! Unfortunately, I barely have enough time to do the podcasts. If you transcribe them, I’ll be happy to publish it.
Dotjav: Thanks for the comment. I just happened to come across that particular article when I wrote that post.
Dennis: Yeah, no probs. You have a valid point though – practice what you preach I say. I’m quite pedantic about spelling, punctuation and grammar. Good copy writing really aids accessibility for everyone, and even the original source of that article could do with improvement, as you point out!
Anonymous: A transcript of the podcast would be great, but I can sympathise with Dennis regarding time. Personally though, I think the podcast plugs a gap. There are a lot of articles out there about accessibility for people to read, which Dennis will often link to or source material from, but little (in comparison) in an audio or video format.
Incidentally, Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 has an automatic transcription feature. Dennis, would you like me to have a go with one of your podcasts?
I agree with you on that matter Sir. The text color of that site really doesn’t fit well with the black background. Visitors would easily get out of that site instantly. And it was titled as Web design and development? duh…
After I visited the site, I didn’t tend to stay long… my eyes hurt with the font color…