Web Accessibility Tip: Design For Machines First, People Second!

You can’t transmit a website directly into a person’s brain! That’s as silly a statement as I’ve ever heard; however, when you think about it, every web page must first pass through some type of hardware and software (e.g. a computer and a web browser) before you can access its content.

That being the case, the best chance you have of your web page being accessible to this ‘intermediate layer’ is to create your pages using standards based markup.

Visitors won’t be able to access your content if your pages don’t work on the particular browser they are using – be it a refreshable braille reader, WebTV, or the latest PC still running the buggy Internet Explorer 6. The secret to success is to ‘code to standards’.

If you code to standards (e.g. HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1, HTML 5) you have the best chance of your web page working on the ‘dumb’ machines that know nothing other than ‘how to follow the rules’ to render the structure of a page to an output device. If you also follow the rules, you are already well down the road towards an accessible website.

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You will learn both the techniques of accessible website design and an entire ‘framework for thinking about the subject’. It will equip you with the skills to understand, identify and fix issues any accessibility issues you come across. Watch the free videos to get a taste of what is on the course.