More Practice What You Preach

Just read the latest E-Access Bulletin from Dan Jellinek over at headstar.com and was interested to note (and so might you) of a new “Accessibility Boosting Campaign”.

A group that includes the British Dyslexia Association, launched the Well Adjusted Campaign, which aims to draw up a list of the top 10 reasonable adjustments that will improve the accessibility of web sites.

The campaign will consult with accessibility experts and the private sector to draw up good practice guidelines that are effective, but easy to understand. “We’re aiming at people who want to do it, but find accessibility scary and complicated,” said Sally Hayward of the 2080partners team.

All good stuff, but why am I left disappointed when I look at the quality of the markup at 2080′s website? — the xml prolog is presented to IE for starters, the lack of hover, focus and active states on hyperlinks for people using a keyboard to navigate by and finally the dangerous use of access keys. 2080′s site doesn’t work in Internet Explorer 7 and the OTT text widget doesn’t work on some of the options presented. I hope this is not another case of snake-oil salesmen.

If they haven’t started already, I hope that they are consulting with GAWDS and the fine people over at the Accessify forums.

Update: It would appear to be “another” Textic promotion. I won’t even give them link-love.

We really need to get the genuine experts and advocates (GAWDS and Web Standards Project) talking to these people and co-ordinating a not-for-profit campaign and website. If a company then comes along wanting to do the same thing they are encouraged by the approached national body to sign up to the existing national campaign.

We don’t need multiple campaigns, just a bloody great big one that is very well marketed with the likes of SOCITM, BSI, CBI etc (apologies for the very British view here).

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One Response to More Practice What You Preach

  1. Dan says:

    Textic is another example of “subscription accessibility”, a great expression I first heard used by Alastair C. While Textic might work for a small minority of users, the real solution is to build accessible sites in the first place, and not rely on these sorts of crutches.