ptg16476052612 LESSON 22: Designing for User Experience
accessibility will limit designers’ options in how they create their sites. There’s also the
fact that accessibility seems like it will add additional work, and most people have too
much to do already.
For a long time, many people thought that accessible was a code word for all text. It was
believed that adding accessibility meant putting all of your content in a single column
running straight down the page and avoiding the bells and whistles that many people
believe are necessary for an attractive website. The fact is that this couldn’t be further
from the truth. Although some common techniques can interfere with accessibility, that
doesn’t mean that you must remove any images, sounds, or multimedia from your web-
site. Nor does it dictate that your layout be simplified.
The demand that accessibility places on designers is that they write clean, standards-com-
pliant markup, take advantage of HTML features that improve accessibility, and use tags
as they are intended to be used in the specification rather than based on how they make
your pages look in the browser. If you’ve been following along with the lessons in this
book, you’re already doing these things.
The other common misapprehension with regard to accessibility is that it will require a
lot of extra work on your part. The fact is that it does require some extra work—creating
your pages so that they take advantage of accessibility features in HTML is more work
than leaving them out. However, in many cases, coding for accessibility will help all of
your users, not just those using alternative browsers.Section 508
Section 508 is a government regulation specifying that U.S. federal government agen-
cies must provide access for all users, including those with disabilities, to electronic and
information technology resources. It requires that federal agencies consider the needs
of disabled users when they spend money on computer equipment or other computer
resources. What this boils down to is that federal websites must be designed in an acces-
sible fashion.
Not only did Section 508 change the rules of the game for many web designers (any-
one involved with federal websites), but it raised the profile of accessibility in general.
Thanks in part to the fact that people didn’t really understand the implications of Section
508 at first, people started thinking a lot about accessibility and what it meant for the
Web.For more information on Section 508, see http://
http://www.section508.gov/.NOTE