Here is Joe Clark’s new book, Building Accessible Websites, on Web Accessibility.
It is to be published by New Riders in October 2001
www.joeclark.org/book
Update (2002): Joe Clark has provided a summary of each Chapter.
Table of contents
- 00. The access manifesto
- A declaration of what accessibility is and should be: “The true reason to design for accessibility is greed. Quite simply, I want it all, and so should you. Give us everything you’ve got. Give us everything there is to give”
- 01. How to read this book
- Facts about the approach, limitations, and typography of the book
- 02. Why bother?
- Why make Websites accessible? Well, why not? Common myths exploded, and active reasons to engage in Web accessibility provided
- 03. How do disabled people use computers?
- The right (as opposed to “correct”) terms to use in discussing disabled people. Screen readers and other adaptive technology
- 04. What is media access?
- Web accessibility is merely the latest form of media access to come down the pike. Learn your history
- 05. The structure of accessible pages
- Web accessibility relies on standards. Learn the importance of valid structured HTML
- 06. The image problem
- Reason in itself to buy this book: The fullest explanation of how to make online images accessible yet written, with dozens of special cases explained
- 07. Text and links
- Text is the most accessible format there is, but some reasonable care must nonetheless be taken
- 08. Navigation
- For a mobility-impaired person (and, to a lesser extent, for a blind person), moving around within Websites is tedious. Learn how to ease the tedium
- 09. Type and colour
- Colourblindness explicated. In this chapter, what little you need to do to ensure readable onscreen type is laid out in black and white, as it were
- 10. Tables and frames
- Tables prompt eye-gouging hissyfits among accessibility advocates and Web designers of all stripes, whether oldschool or avant-garde. Both sides are saddled with myths and both argue in large part from ideology. Let’s do a reality check, shall we?
- 11. Stylesheets
- We are told that stylesheets hold tremendous untapped power in accessible Web design. Could it be almost completely untrue?
- 12. Forms and interaction
- Getting around inside Web forms
- 13. Multimedia
- Near and dear to my heart, a full discussion of captioning and audio description of multimedia
- 14. Certification and testing
- You may be required to assert that your Website is accessible – and prove it. Here’s how
- 15. Future dreams
- The current state of the art barely qualifies as an “art.” What do we need for Websites to be truly and elegantlyaccessible?