Customer Reviews

Building Accessible Websites (VOICES)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

First of all, I would like commend Mr. Clark for addressing this topic at all. Accessibility is an important in computer development.

While the content seems to be accurate, and quite detailed to the point that you could use the information in the book to actually build a site with it, the writing is so poor and very difficult to read. Mr. Clark needs to throw away his thesaurus and hire an editor. He would be better off delivering his message in a clear and concise manner, and spend less time writing in a very "fancy" way that would be better suited for thesis papers rather than a book targeted towards the masses. This heavy style of writing makes it a difficult book to digest while riding the subway.

Pretentious - the one word I would use to describe the overall style of writing. This really put me off as a reader, making the content even more difficult to absorb. (In one case, the author actually explains his choice of word, "indention" as opposed to the more commonly used "indentation". His explanation seemed to imply that everyone who uses "indentation" is clearly *wrong*; two online dictionaries confirmed that "indentation" could have been used.) Of course, my opinion that the writing of this book is pretentious could also come from actually having met the author.

Read this book only if you really have the time to struggle through all his big words to get at the meaning behind them.

Am I the only one who finds the cover art to be a bit... questionable?

Written in 2002, this book is still considered the gold standard in web accessibility. I have no idea why. What Joe Clark has accomplished here is to spread about 20 pages of good accessibility information across a 400 page miasma. Most web designers don't care about the history of captioning and transcription systems--we just want the facts, man. What should we do, and what should we avoid. Best practices. Etc. That info is in here, but you have to cut a swath through the verbosity to find much of it. Or just read the last page of each chapter, which summarizes the previous 40-odd pages in six or less sentences. Save yourself the price of the book and scan through the entire text of the book online. In the end, Building Accessible Websites is an inaccessible read.

The information in to book is okay, but the little font really hurt my eyes. It felt like parts of me were being stretched to their limits; parts that just simply were not meant to be stretched. The book was pretty good though. A little dry for my taste. Oh, and if you look closely at the cover art, you can see a goat!

This book has some wonderful information. However, I find it ironic how this book discusses accessibility and the book itself is not accessible! It is written in tiny, tiny font. I had to use a maginifying glass to read it! After struggling through a few chapters, I moved on to another book, Maximum Accessibility, with much larger font.

From the first line of the book it is obvious Joe Clark holds all other human beings in contempt and feels like his reader are idiots wasting his time.

I was looking forward to reading this, but what a disappointment. I need information on what the laws and standards actually are, not what Mr Clarke thinks they *should* be. This book seems less about accessibility, and more about Mr Clark. For example, there is an extended section triumphantly detailing every typeface used, every piece of software the author used to write the book - with version numbers - and we even learn the colour of his Mac. We find out who his friends are, and what music he listened to while he wrote the book. We are privileged to be told which of his friends gave us the CDs of those pieces of music. All of which leaves no room for discussion about such fripperies as JavaScript or PDF. Who'd want to learn about those in a book about Accessibility?

The book is also maddening to read. I need information, delivered relatively neutrally. The typeface used next to figures has an annoying, pretentious little loop between 's' and 't's, making it difficult to read. The main title font has exactly the same size caps as lowercase, when Mr Clarke of all people should know that a lot of reading is carried out by recognising the 'shape' of words rather than reading each character (that's why READING ALL CAPITALS IS SO DIFFICULT). The index is poor and badly laid out, the screenshots are fuzzy and difficult to see. Then there's the author's verbal tic of dropping in french words when the English would suffice, which is tres annoying, n'est ce pas? Especially to those who don't parle Francais. The constant authorial interventions to demonstrate his own learning makes reading the book feel like being hectored by some prissy, preening self-obsessive.

My verdict (to take one of the chapter titles as a two-word summary): Why bother?

In this book, Clark presents a lot of advice to help authors in creating accessible websites. Each chapter gives advice (albeit very opinionated) on how to design accessibility into a page. Because this is done outside the pale of established accessibility standards, this is not a book to read if you want to learn the standards. However, this perspective does emphasize that accessibility is much more than just meeting a few checklists on a Section 508 or W3C WCAG form.

Clark's writing is engaging and colourful; that having been said, if you tend to appreciate dispassionate books, this is not a book for you.

I think that many people tend to avoid dealing with disable people and to what relates to disabilities.
When I bought that book, I was not sure I would have the courage to read it entirely. Sure, web content accessibility is important, but I thought it would be boring to learn. I was wrong. Joe Clark manages to make his reading very interesting, very enjoyable. I have read the book in less time I initially thought, because I have been learning stuff on every page, and I did it with a smile on my face. I am now working on an accessibility policy for my web site, retrofitting most of my existing pages to make them accessible, thanks to what I've learned in this book.

In the new environment where customer service rules, all web masters must consider the needs of those whose senses are not within the ordinary norms. Furthermore, the federal government has a great deal to say about what is required of web sites when it comes to servicing the handicapped. Therefore, it is necessary for all web programmers to learn what the rules are and how to most efficiently satisfy them. That is the purpose of this book and the author is successful, although in a very preachy way.
Two pleasing points are that the author scoffs at those who play semantic games in describing people with handicaps, heaping particular scorn on the term "handicapable." People who are blind or deaf simply will not experience the web the same way as those with those senses and short of eliminating that medical limitation, nothing can be done about that. Which is the second of the points. It is absurd to try to make the experience equivalent to that of a sighted or hearing person, so the focus should be on making it as functional as possible within their field of experience.
While much has been done in terms of screen readers and closed captioning, there is still a lot of weaknesses in the technology that replaces the actions of one sense with another. Clark is very clear about those weaknesses, pointing out that some things are just not possible, so the emphasis should be on what is possible. Further points of emphasis are in the usability testing of the site, where it is difficult to perform such tests without using someone whose handicap is what the structure is supposed to overcome. As is the case with all other areas of software development, including the accessibility must be part of the initial design, as making the adaptations later is much more difficult and expensive.
Hard data concerning the numbers of people with the various handicaps that access the web is very difficult to find. However, there are two facts that cannot be disputed. The first is that it is significant enough so that they cannot be ignored, even if the law was silent on the issue. Customers are too valuable to ignore any of them and the size of the group will continue to grow. The largest growing segment of the regular population is the elderly, most of which suffer vision and hearing problems. This group is also moving to the web at a very rapid pace and they generally have a lot of money to spend, so it simply makes good e-business sense to design your site so that they can use it with ease. To do anything else is poor business practice, and I recommend reading this book as a fundamental part of your business on the Internet.