RNIB - Accessibility.

[iCraig]

I may begin to engage in a project in a few months, of redesigning a website on affective disorders. The client wants the site to be fully accessible to a huge range of visitors.

The usual stuff I've got nailed down already, such as the ability for the visitor to increase and decrease text size as they see fit. A high constrast version of the site, and various other accessibility guidelines surrounding forms and imagery.

However, they want blind people to be able to use the site just as easily as people with sight. How would I go about this, as text sizing here doesn't make a blind bit of difference. (Pun very much intended) Is there a way to tag menu items with audio files to play when tabbed onto?

I presume the blind people accessing the site will use a screenreader, so what's the best way to ensure our site is compatible with a screenreader?

 

[Augmented]

Accesskeys are good - provide direct access to important navigation links. Can be difficult to implement as different user-agents and environments already have key combinations mapped (like ALT+L etc.).

Using tabindexes are always good for sensible form navigation, and ensuring all form controls have associated labels, fieldsets and so on.

Table markup as outlined in this classic article post and also here.

Audio/screenreading is difficult to manage. I think few screenreaders use the aural media type, and most simply screenscrape - only reading out the rendered text on the page (why display: none; is usually bad for accessibility)

juicystudio.com has some very good articles on accessible markup.

/edit - when you say people with 'affective disorders', are these the intended audience? If so, then I would think you should really be concentrating on accessibility for people with motor and cognitive issues, rather than prioritising accssibility for the blind i.e. use plain language, no flashing elements, large form controls and so on. See: http://juicystudio.com/article/cognitive-impairment.php

 

[Mr_L]

I presume the blind people accessing the site will use a screenreader, so what's the best way to ensure our site is compatible with a screenreader?

Testing.

There are certain design principles you can go through first, but you need to test the website in a screen reader to make sure that it is usable in one. Moreover, not just testing it yourself, although this could be done at first but you would need to do user testing. Selecting a group of users who will be using the website and asking them to go through it with you will provide valuable information into how usable, or not, the website is. As well as giving feedback on how the website works with screen readers, they can also give you feedback on other accessible aspects of the website.

You can download a demonstration version of JAWS (screen reader) that will allow you to check the website yourself, but user testing would provide the most useful information.

 

[SiD the Turtle]

In professional developments we adhere to the W3C standard called WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative). This gives you a lot of things you should do to help people who have any kind of accessibility issues. They define three levels of accessibility, 1, 2 and 3. All websites really should try and be at least level 1 (all the ones we do are) which includes things like don't use layout tables because screen readers can't read them properly. To be fully compatible with blind people you will need at least level 2 compliance, if not 3. That is very pedantic and hard to fulfill. Read all about it at:

http://www.w3.org/WAI/

Edit: The actual guidelines are here: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/