Our websites for this class have to meet Priority One accessibility standards. I didn’t know what those were so I decided to write a post about them. The first Google article I found was for the w3c, which is probably as it should be. However, trying to decipher those seemed a bit overwhelming so I looked for a site that had them broken down a bit. Found one! A site called The HTML Writers Guild has their own interpretation of the Priority One checkpoints and they seem to mirror the w3c standards but are easier to understand. Here’s their list followed by my explanations:

• Provide text equivalents for non-text elements.

Use alt, longdesc, etc. for images, imagemap areas, multimedia, etc.

• Don’t rely solely upon color.

Color useage is encouraged but you should also use strong tags or something else to identify text marked by a color change.

• Identify language changes.

Use the LANG attribute (and probably the SPAN element) to mark language changes. An example is:

<span lang=”fr”>Cette phrase est en français</span>.

• Make sure pages are usable without style sheets.>

Use of CSS is encouraged but you should check to make sure your pages still present well (and in order) when the CSS is turned off.

• Update equivalents for generated content.

If you have dynamic content, make sure images and other related items are in synch with the content.

• Don’t make the screen flicker.

Period.

• Use plain, understandable English.

If you use a technical term or jargon, provide a reference link.

• Use client-side imagemaps, not server-side.

“Server-side imagemaps may be used in addition to client-side maps, but should never replace them. A text equivalent list of links should be provided for all imagemaps.”

• Use HTML 4.0 table markup on data tables.

This one is a biggie and I’m not going to detail it here. In general, though, it means using stuff like THEAD, TBODY, COLGROUP, CAPTION etc. You can read about it in the HTML 4.0 Specification.

• Frames should have NOFRAMES and TITLEs.

(If you use frames)

• Don’t rely solely upon scripts and applets.

An example here is that if you’re using client-side validation for forms, make sure you also have a server-side script for users with JavaScript turned off.

• As a last resort, make an alternate page.

Try to avoid this if possible. The author of the HTML Writers Guild site noted that often, alternate pages aren’t updated like the original one, so they tend to get out of synch.