Design Accessible Web Sites: 36 Keys to Creating Content for All Audiences and Platforms (Pragmatic Programmers) [Paperback]

Jeremy Sydik (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 12, 2007 | Series: Pragmatic Programmers

It's not a one-browser web anymore. You need to reach audiences that use cell phones, PDAs, game consoles, or other "alternative" browsers, as well as users with disabilities. Legal requirements for assistive technologies as well as a wide array of new browsing experiences means you need to concentrate on semantics, alternate access paths, and progressive enhancement.

Give your audience the power to interact with your content on their own terms. It's the right thing to do, and with a $100 billion a year market for accessible content, new laws and new technologies, you can't afford to ignore accessibility.

With this book, you'll learn basic principles and techniques for developing accessible HTML, audio, video, and multimedia content. In addition, you will understand how to apply the principles you learn in this book to new technologies when they emerge.

You'll learn how to:

Use best practices of accessibility to develop accessible web content Build testing into projects to improve results and reduce costs Create high quality alternative representations for your audience Add accessibility features to external media like PDF and Flash Negotiate the terrain of accessibility standards Apply principles of accessiblity to new technologies as they emerge

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jeremy J. Sydik is Director of Research Technology Development at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Center for Instructional Innovation. With a background in computer science and cognitive psychology, he has over ten years of experience in developing high-quality (accessible!) user interfaces to improve learning of abstract concepts.

Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf; 1 edition (November 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1934356026
• ISBN-13: 978-1934356029
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,052,645 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Ask Felgall - Book Review, December 11, 2011

By 

Stephen Chapman (Sydney, NSW, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Design Accessible Web Sites: 36 Keys to Creating Content for All Audiences and Platforms (Pragmatic Programmers) (Paperback)

There is a lot more to accessibility than just taking the needs of a small percentage of your visitors with obvious disabilities into account as this book clearly demonstrates. The book starts by considering the various types of disability - visual, audial, and cognative - and throughout the book covers a huge range of things that can be taken into account in order to make a web site easier for people with varying degrees of disability in any of these areas to use.

The order in which the information is presented in this book makes the book easy to use regardless of the type of web site that you are creating. The aspects of accessibility that apply to all web sites are dealt with in the earlier part of the book where such things as colour selection to allow people who are colour-blind to still read the page and how to make the page usable forr people without a mouse are covered. When to use tables and how to make them accessible when you do use them is also covered in the early part of the book. The middle part of the book covers accessibility for a variety of technologies that only some web sites use providing the information that you need if you are using those technologies. The section at the back covers the current and proposed accessibility guidelines and steps you through what those guidelines actually mean. Some of the guidelines relate to proposed technologies that never actually eventuated or specify how things needed to be done to make pages accesssible in really old browsers that no one uses any more and the book makes it clear how the guidelines actually specified when certain methods would be no longer applicable.

This is an excellent book on how to make any web site more accessible. I do suggest however that reading the book through from start to finish is not the best way of benefitting from this book as reading the book that way it tends to become repetitive and boring. Instead you should start by reading part one and then read the other parts of the book as you find a need.

5.0 out of 5 stars Practical Advice in a Readable Way for an Important Topic, February 3, 2008

By 

J. J. Kwashnak "voracious reader" (Monroe, LA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Design Accessible Web Sites: 36 Keys to Creating Content for All Audiences and Platforms (Pragmatic Programmers) (Paperback)

As the world continues to march to information on the Internet, the issue of accessibility for Web sites has continued to grow in importance. Especially as glitz and flashy programming grow ever more popular in Web design, the chance of leaving those with special needs behind increases. What accessibility means also can be a murky area, though as lawsuits against Target and other stores over Web accessibility shows, this is still important. Sydik helps cut through the often vague standards to show the reader step-by-step things that are important for accessibility, but often are not major changes. He explains what accessibility entails, and looks at different solutions, and the pitfalls that some can produce making things worse for accessibility when it is trying to improve it. His chapters are grouped into thematic sections, but each chapter focuses on one item, keeping the information short and relevant to the topic. At the conclusion he walks through the current and proposed accessibility standards and gives practical advice and translation of what the sections mean, and what you can do about it (citing chapters that addressed the topic). This book is very readable, practical and sits on my desk for quick reference and advice. It is an excellent starting point for acquainting yourself with the issue of accessibility for Web sites and what you can do to help design them properly.

5.0 out of 5 stars The title and publisher say it all: Pragmatic + Accessibility, December 21, 2007

By 

Jason Kunesh (chicago, il United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Design Accessible Web Sites: 36 Keys to Creating Content for All Audiences and Platforms (Pragmatic Programmers) (Paperback)

Jeremy's Design Accessible Web Sites provides practical advice alongside with the theoretical underpinnigs in upbeat style. This books covers actionable steps to take in fixing many common accessibility problems but it also does something more important. It gives the reader a theoretical framework for considering and solving accessibility issues for tricky scenarios.

Some other books are better on regulatory issues and others on multimedia items like Flash since the focus here is web site design. That said, it's a great read for web site design and web standards work. For that it's first rate, with modern techniques and consideration of the future of accessibility issues (AJAX, WCAG 2), and with a breadth and richness of subject matter.