DO-IT
There’s an excellent series put out by DO-IT at the University of Washington designed to help people understand making technology accessible for people with disabilities. One show was just on channel 9404 of Dish Network, “World Wide Access: Accessible Web Design”. It’s an excellent program, that really helped me connect accessibility design concepts (which I try very hard to implement) to how it affects end users. Seeing a blind person browse a page with a screen reader, a deaf person asking the person sitting next to them what’s being said or heard while watching a Flash animation that isn’t captioned, and so on, just makes it real. There are also examples of poor eyesight, people with English as a second language, color-blind, and other characteristics that need to be considered when designing a web site.
If you don’t have access to UWTV, you can watch a streaming version of the program here, or if you don’t like RealPlayer or WMV, UWTV has it available as video-on-demand in Quicktime format, though it’s not available today as the program is currently in their broadcast lineup. Some of the major points of the video, along with what you need to do to help your site be accessible is on their accompanying page on Universal Design. Good stuff!
Posted Saturday February 11, 2006 in Web Development by Derek Jones
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