Round-up: Accessibility References for Non-Tech People

Elizabeth Galle tweeted a request today for accessibility references that a team of not-necessarily tech savvy people would get some use out of. Twitter responded with some great links almost immediately, and I wanted to collect those replies here in one place to serve as a starting point for any others with similar needs.

The tweet that started it off:

@Tawreh makes an excellent point that web accessibility can be likened to a book, and that you should give your readers a sense of “I know where things are” immediately rather than trying to reinvent the wheel and inevitably confusing them (or frustrating them to the point that they just give up).

Others presented links to basic guidelines from the W3C and WebAIM groups, the authoritative sources for web usability and accessibility. The WebAIM website in particular is quite aesthetically dated, but still packs a lot of very useful information:

The internet has the potential to revolutionize disability access to information, but if we’re not careful, we can place obstacles along the way that destroy that potential and which leave people with disabilities just as discouraged and dependent upon others as before.

Statistics! Numbers! Proof that there’s actually good reason to pay attention to accessibility practices. The information is a few years old, but it’s still valid as a means of saying this matters to real people. It’s not just us web people coming up with new things to preach about.

Max references the bible of web design:

Sadly, not all web resources live forever.

Social bookmarking to the rescue!

And Angela points out that Twitter itself is a great place to find a11y information and discussions:

I don’t have anything in particular to add to this, except to say that this is a topic not nearly enough web designers and developers pay attention to. Just because someone has a disability of some kind doesn’t mean they aren’t using the web, and just because someone’s using the web doesn’t mean they don’t have some kind of need that would benefit from even basic accessibility practices.

Keep that in mind.

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