Accessibility Resources

Resources for Web and DHTML accessibility from both the design and technical perspectives.

General Resources

• Make Your Web Content Accessible Course 
• Inclusive and Accessible Web Content Guide
• Quick-and-Dirty Website Accessibility Tests - and Fixes
  An overview of techniques to quickly and easily improve the accessibility of web pages.
• Basic Guidelines for Achieving Accessibility
  A few framing thoughts that are inspiration for strategies to produce Basic Good Practice Guidelines
• Accessibility consideration for embedded content
  An overview of accessibility related concerns and things to be aware of when embedding content
• PDF to accessible format
  Not without controversy, this site will allow you to upload a PDF and convert it into fairly good HTML or TXT
• A break-down of PDF and accessibility
  This site does a nice job of pointing out the quick-fix and also more accessible process of producing accessible PDFs.
• Apple accessibility links
  Apple maintains a list of useful accessibility links for 3rd party solutions, mac products, community resources, and standards bodies.
• W3C Multimedia Accessibility FAQ
  Some helpful how-tos for making multimedia materials accessible.

Policy

• Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005
  An Introduction to the AODA
• WAI-ARIA Overview
  An overview of WAI-ARIA, the Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suite; a set of documents that lay out how to make Web 2.0 sites and applications more accessible.

Testing Tools

• AChecker
  AChecker is a tool that allows you to type in a url and test for accessibility.
• W3C complete list of tools
  A Complete list of web accessibility evaluation tools
• HiSoftware's Cynthia Says Portal
  This site allows you to type in a url and test for accessiblity, and it also allows you to emulate different browsers while doing the test.
• Webaim articles on testing using a screen reader:
  • Using NVDA to Evaluate Web Accessibility
  • Using VoiceOver to Evaluate Web Accessibility
  • Using JAWS to Evaluate Web Accessibility

Development Tools

• Mozilla Developer Center's ARIA Overview: a comprehensive overview of ARIA and other DHTML accessibility techniques
• MDC's Key-navigable Custom DHTML Widgets: a tutorial on adding keyboard handlers to your widgets. Also take a look at Fluid's Keyboard a11y plugin for keyboard accessibility.
• MDC's ARIA Live Regions Overview

Fluid Resources

• Accessibility Review Protocols: A checklist of techniques for evaluating the accessibility of your Web site.
• An Overview of DHTML Accessibility
• DHTML Developer Checklist: A checklist of techniques for modern, accessible JavaScript programming
• Accessibility Decorators
• Notes on User Interface Adaptation and User Preferences
• Accessibility Transformation Brainstorming: A list of potential user interface transformations that could be supported by the Fluid framework.
• TransformAble 2.0 Roadmap
• Fluid Presentations on Accessibility
• Matterhorn Opencast a11y overview: A basic overview of accessibility standards for video as envisioned for the Opencast project