Accessibility Update

After reading Luke's excellent book The Truth About HTML5 I should update my previous statements about responsibility for web site accessibility.

As it turns out, Internet Explorer has finally come to the party when it comes to browser standardization and the latest versions are more consistent in terms of how they deal with code which makes it easier for the typical front-end developer to meet accessibility standards. I didn't know this when I wrote my previous comments but it is undoubtedly a good thing for all!

Luke's advice on how to improve web site accessibility using ARIA landmarks is, I think extremely important and I look forward to using it to improve the accessibility of my new web sites once I am finished creating the data and scripts that form their basis.

I've also shifted somewhat on all the hoopla about responsive design which advises to build sites for mobile first. I actually ended up using this approach with my newest site, BudgetAus because I thought it was something that people with Smartphones might find worth a visit and I wanted them to have a good experience.

I used to think that with the way Smartphones are designed to render pages not built for mobile use using their own means was good enough but I've been turned on to the benefits of not having to scroll unnecessarily and built the basic layout around this principle. Unfortunately competing against this is the number of results that the form scripts generate which are desperately in need of pagination so I'm working on that and giving users maximum control over the results. The forms probably need to have both their accessibility and usability for mobile users improved too so these will be my upcoming tasks.