The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Dive into Accessibility indeed

Validated XHTML

This ensures that the code that we have used on this site validates against the W3C's strict standard. As more and more assistive technology (such as a Braille reader, a screen reader, TTY, etc.) is using this standard to build against, we can be sure of making our site accessible to the widest audience.

Validated CSS

Again, by validating our style sheets against the W3C gold standard, we can make our site accessible to everybody with a DDA compliant browser or other assistive technology.

W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0

All pages have been validated against standard using “Bobby.” This service allows us to test web pages and help expose and repair barriers to accessibility and encourage compliance with existing accessibility guidelines, such as Section 508 and the W3C's WCAG.

Section 508 Guidelines

The Section 508 guidelines have been reviewed and implemented. All pages are in compliance.

All pages on this site use structured semantic markup. H2 tags are used for main titles, H3 tags for subtitles. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within the accessibility statement by pressing ALT+INSERT+3.

Via Mark Pilgrim, Accessibility Statement @ SoundsDirty.com (not safe for work)

I'm not sure why I found it surprising that a porn site (need I even bother mentioning this isn't work safe?) would bother with web accessibility standards, but I did. Porn sites in general have always pushed the limits of web technology (they were early adoptors of micropayment schemes, web subscriptions, flash, Java Applets) and I suppose that making a site accessible to everyone is just an opportunity to make more money (Playboy in braille anyone?).

So if a porn site can be accessible, then gosh darn it! So will my site! So I've been playing around with accessibility validator and adding some more markup to make my site here a bit more accessible.

Why not?

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No AI was used in the making of this site, unless otherwise noted.

You have my permission to link freely to any entry here. Go ahead, I won't bite. I promise.

The dates are the permanent links to that day's entries (or entry, if there is only one entry). The titles are the permanent links to that entry only. The format for the links are simple: Start with the base link for this site: https://boston.conman.org/, then add the date you are interested in, say 2000/08/01, so that would make the final URL:

https://boston.conman.org/2000/08/01

You can also specify the entire month by leaving off the day portion. You can even select an arbitrary portion of time.

You may also note subtle shading of the links and that's intentional: the “closer” the link is (relative to the page) the “brighter” it appears. It's an experiment in using color shading to denote the distance a link is from here. If you don't notice it, don't worry; it's not all that important.

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