I have been designing and programming the webpages of Curtin University Centre for Accessible Technology (www.cucat.org) and it doing so have collected a few thoughts about accessible web pages.
Along with as the usual things like alt tags and high contrast of type. It occurred to me from my own use and that of my blind wife that many pages require the screen reader, and sighted users as well, to navigate through a whole range of site navigation links before ever getting to the content of the site.
In the CUCAT site I have attempted to deal with this by placing the navigation links at the bottom of the page so that when you land on a page you reach that pages content. In the event of a very long page where the navigation would be at the bottom I will have a single link which will take the reader to the navigation links.
It would seem to me that this approach would be better for pages intended to be read by screen readers, as well as by the sighted rather than have all the visual and auditory distraction of complex headers at the top of the page to navigate through before reaching the true content of the page.
Also I feel the content of the page read in an uninterrupted flow without breaking to offer other services or information.
As a general design rule I feel that webpages have become much to complex and busy. This applies to the sighted as well as the blind. Would you want a book in which the text flashed, moved or in some other way animated the pages? Would you want a book in which bight coloured text, unrelated to what you were reading littered the sides of the main content area? The answer is, no, of course not but that is often what we are getting from modern website design. There seems to be of late the approach the because we can do something on a page we should.
Just some thoughts to think about. Greg Kearney 535 S. Jackson St. Casper, Wyoming 82601 307-224-4022 gkearney@xxxxxxxxx
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