Accessibility - More on this ...

By Jim Meeker:

Paschal L had some comments on accessibility today. To those of us in government service this is a very important subject since Section 508 makes it mandatory to make all government web sites accessible to the disabled.

Bobby is a good tool to begin checking your site for accessibility, but it doesn't guarantee compliance with Section 508.  It doesn't check everything that 508 mandates. Nothing beats the good old human eye and and knowing the law when checking your code for compliance.

One problem that I come across frequently is forgetting about color-blind users. If you're using color to indicate something on your site and you use red or green then color blind people will see that as gray.  To get around this you should use some other method to indicate this also.  You dont have to get rid of the coloring but you should include another method for color-blind user. 

There are a number of other issues. The Section 508 site covers most of them in depth.

 

4 Comments

  • Colour blindness is not usually so severe that colour is seen as grey - I'm colour blind myself in the red/green area but don't see either colour as grey.


    What should be avoided in my experience (or lack of experience, if you see what I mean) is text on similar temperature backgrounds.


  • I agree Duncan. By the way I still have in mind the idea of an Irish user group, but I don't have the time at the moment to organise that.


    Maybe in few months ?

  • As colour blindness is caused by a lack of accuity in the cones there should be a way of mathematically working out how likely two colours are to be seen as one and apply this to the HTML colour elements? I shall have a google around for info.





    I think an Irish user group would be a good idea but I don't have much to offer it at the moment as I'm back in VB5 land for this current gig.

  • That's true Duncan. But others have color-blindness to differing degrees (at least that's how it was explained to me. I'm not color-blind.) We should design with everyone in mind.





    I'm of Irish descent. Can I join? ;) Thanks for the post Paschal.





    Jim

Comments have been disabled for this content.