The authors here at fadtastic have done great things. They’ve written about the latest in web design trends. The latest in standards. The forefront of design. One article struck me last week - and it was not really about any of these things. Matt’s Passion in Design made me think about one part of part of web design that I’ve maybe not given enough attention to recently - accessibility.

Accessibility was the reason I entered the web design industry. My passion for the things I do means that I must have goals. And my goal was to create accessible websites that don’t stifle creativity whilst ranking well in search engines. I guess that these 3 areas (accessibility/SEO/design) are the cornerstone of my skill set. Now I have made small waves in our little old town of Nottingham (UK), but I hope to produce a whole series of articles on accessibility.

What I don’t want to is to mention valid xhtml or WAI compliant code. Other people are better at writing about standards, accessibility and validators. It’s really not my style to point out the number of errors on a page. What I hope to do is to introduce small but significant ideas that will make the web more accessible to all. Yes - you read it - all.

And that brings me to my first article subject. It’s a bit of a rant but bear with me.

Think about the conversations you’ve had (whether real or online) or articles you’ve read recently. Now narrow it down to those centered on accessibility. How many times did they involve the words visually impaired or disabled users?

Accessibility is for all. By all means consider disabled users or the visually impaired - it is a very important subject. But please, when posting/writing on the Net, don’t mention just these subjects when debating accessibility issues. Imagine a newbie (10 points for the buzzword!) going to stylegala for instance. Imagine they read about accessibility in the forums. From the posts there it would seem that accessibility is about blind people. It is. But not just about blind people!

So my messages are to speak about accessibility and include everyone when giving accessibility tips. I’ll end on an example:

I read an article on AJAX accessibility that stated that when changing content on the screen via AJAX, one should make it obvious to visually impaired users. NO! Make it obvious to all.

Sorry for the rant and I apologise if I sound inconsiderate to those with access problems. It just needed to be said.

Let me know whether you liked this article and whether you’d like to see more about accessibility. And if you’re passionate about ‘real accessibility’ then why not become an author?

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The posts Accessible can be Beautiful, Accessibility matters to…, You’re a standardista if… (Friday Fun), RoboBraille.org converts text to Braille/Audio, Flash and Accessibility, are related to this post.

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