I’ve long been a fan of Dan’s site - Simplebits - and have been reading it for a long time now, so I was really looking forward to seeing him speak. I wasn’t so much looking forward to the early start after something of a late end to the day before, and it was a bit of a shame that he was given Slot of Doom 2 (Slot of Doom 1 being post-lunch Day 1 of any conference, Slot of Doom 2 being first on Day 2) but it was worth the effort.
A few people who already had Dan’s book - Bulletproof Web Design - seemed disappointed that there wasn’t anything new to them in the presentation, but although there wasn’t much that was new to me either, it was still interesting to hear him talk, and share his experience and philosophy. It was especially good to hear him talk about issues which affect accessibility not from an accessibility standpoint, but from a designer’s standpoint - of wanting to do the best job, and ensuring that as wide an audience as possible can read the site.
For those who don’t want to wade through the 20mb PDF of his presentation (linked below) and can’t wait for the recorded audio, I’ve transcribed a few of my notes below (my additions in parenthesis).
The Bulletproof Design Concept
- Embrace flexibility (of both text size and layout, if appropriate)
- Let go of pixel precision
- Plan ahead for worst-case scenarios (graceful degradation in older browsers, etc.)
The 10 second usability test
- Take away the design (disable CSS)
- Is the site still understandable?
- Does the structure make sense?
The Bulletproof Dashboard
(of tools that can help you ensure a bulletproof design)
- Do the 10 second usability test
- Turn off images - is all information still available?
- Validate markup and stylesheets
- Perform the Digdug text test Named after the video game Digdug, where the “enemy” characters are blown up until they explode) - increase (and decrease) the text size
Obviously, just doing the above won’t guarantee an accessible site, but if more people followed those simple rules, a number of sites would instantly become more accessible than they are currently, and I’ve got hopes that the people in the audience who hadn’t thought this way before will go back to their jobs and put this kind of sensible advice into practice.
George | 20/06/2006 at 18:05 | Permalink
Dan’s slides make so much sense. It is a shame that a couple of his recommendations won’t be usable in conjunction with WCAG 2.0. Take page 155 for example. Background images as icons are frowned upon in the recommendations as an alternative is not avaiable when stylesheets are turned off.
For me this looks like one of the best presentations from @media and a sensible and workable application of web standards.
Ann | 20/06/2006 at 22:02 | Permalink
Icons as background images are only frowned upon when they give information that’s not given elsewhere (and that’s something that’s in WCAG1.0 too…).
In the examples highlighted on page 155 of his presentation, the images/icons are decorative, because the information required is given by the adjacent text and so they don’t require descriptive alt text.
So it’s still very much a viable option, and actually, is one of my favourite techniques for adding benefit for users who perhaps have learning/reading or cognitive difficulties (who might benefit from well chosen images to illustrate the text) and from a developer’s point of view it’s easier to maintain because it doesn’t involve peppering the markup with embedded images with null alt.
Obviously, if it’s an image that presents information (for example, the star ratings images), then it should be embedded as content (rather than presentation) and given appropriate alt text.