Product Description

A comprehensive resource for creating Web sites that comply with new U.S. accessibility standards and conform to the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. Offers an overview of key issues, and discusses the standards in depth. Softcover.

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #218938 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 640 pages

From the Back Cover

Accessibility is now a legal requirement for all national government Web sites in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the European Union. Throughout the world, many other organizations--universities, schools, and private companies--are recognizing that accessibility is a moral and business imperative; many are adopting policies aimed at making Web resources accessible to the more than six hundred million people with disabilities worldwide.

Maximum Accessibility is a comprehensive resource for creating Web sites that comply with new U.S. accessibility standards and conform to the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. This book offers an overview of key issues, discusses the standards in depth, and presents practical design techniques, up-to-date technologies, and testing methods to implement these standards for maximum accessibility. You will learn how to:

• Write effective text equivalents for images and audio files
• Caption soundtracks and describe the action of videos and animation
• Set up data and layout tables that make sense to the ear and eye
• Design Web forms that people can interact with via the keyboard and other input devices
• Label forms so that people who use talking browsers can give the right information at the right time
• Make scripts accessible to people who don't use a mouse
• Create simple PDF files that are accessible to people with disabilities
• Use cascading style sheets to make your thoroughly accessible pages look great

Throughout the book, case studies illustrate how inadvertent accessibility barriers on major Web sites affect the ability of people with disabilities to locate information, participate in e-commerce, and explore the richness of the Web. These case studies demonstrate how certain design features can make access much harder, and how other features can greatly ease the use of a page or site.

Most of all, this leading-edge guide reveals that a little extra design consideration up front can help you create a site that is not only a pleasure for people with disabilities, but attractive and pleasing for all interested users. In short, Maximum Accessibility shows why good design is accessible design.

0201774224B08282002

About the Author

John M. Slatin, Ph.D., is a leader in the field of Web accessibility. He is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he founded and directs the Institute for Technology and Learning. He developed the award-winning AccessFirst Design Concept and the AccessFirst Design and Usability Studio, a consultancy that advises organizations on the accessibility of Web sites to people with disabilities.

Sharron Rush is the cofounder and Executive Director of Knowbility, a nonprofit technology education and advocacy group. Since 1998, she has produced Accessibility Internet Rallies (AIR) throughout the U.S., engaging hundreds of Web developers and their companies in accessibility issues and providing them with accessible design skills. The Peter F. Drucker Foundation, the U.S. Department of Labor, and numerous others have recognized these efforts for excellence and innovation.

0201774224AB08282002

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Maximum Accessibility tells you how to make the World Wide Web more accessible and more usable for everyone, including over 600 million people around the world who have disabilities. That includes 54 million Americans (almost 6 million of whom are children) and 37 million people in Europe Bureau of the Census 1997; United Nations 2000. We've written Maximum Accessibility for Web designers, developers, and programmers who create complex, data-driven Web applications; full-time Web masters; folks who manage their departmental Web sites with one hand and do full-time jobs with the other; production managers; people who commission the creation of Web resources for their organizations; people who provide community services in community technology centers, nonprofit agencies, and health care facilities; teachers who want to help students learn and get parents involved in their children's education; and, finally, anyone who's interested in creating Web sites that can reach lots of people, showing others how to do it, and helping them understand why.

We assume that you're involved in some way in creating Web pages. This involvement can take many forms, from creating a personal Web site to building huge sites for Fortune 500 companies to posting occasional updates to a small site for your department or a community organization you belong to. Perhaps you train Web developers or include a unit on Web authoring in a course you teach. If you know something about HTML, the underlying language of the Web, you'll appreciate our discussions of the way some pages work (or where they break down). But if HTML isn't your cup of tea, you'll still find plenty to interest you in the examples we've selected and in our explanations of how different aspects of Web design affect people who have disabilities. If you're familiar with disability issues and have been searching for ways to persuade colleagues, managers, or service providers to address the accessibility concerns you've raised, we think you'll find helpful material in this book. If disability is a new topic for you, Maximum Accessibility is a good place to start.

Maximum Accessibility is divided into two sections. In Section 1 we answer the question, "What is accessibility and why does it matter?" Here you'll find four chapters that provide a good working definition of accessibility and discuss relevant issues of law and policy, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act. You'll learn about the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 and the Section 508 federal standards and how they apply. You'll also learn how accessibility awareness can have a positive impact in your community. And you'll get the information you need to make a strong business case for accessibility to members in your own organization and to your customers.

Interspersed among these chapters are four "user experience" chapters that offer detailed case studies, in readable narrative form, to demonstrate how inadvertent accessibility barriers on major Web sites affect the ability of people with disabilities to successfully locate information, explore our rich cultural heritage, and participate in e-commerce. You'll learn how specific features make access harder--and how other features can help. You'll see the accessibility guidelines and standards as they apply to real people using real Web sites.

In Section 2 of Maximum Accessibility, we show you how to use those same guidelines and standards to anticipate accessibility challenges and turn them into good design solutions--solutions that work for all your users. You'll learn about combining multiple approaches (and multiple media!) to create rich, equivalent alternatives for the content on your Web site. We'll show you how to write effective text equivalents for audio files and images and how to caption the soundtracks and describe the action of videos and animations so that people who aren't in a position to hear or see what's happening on the screen can still follow the important points of what's being said and done. You'll learn how to set up data and layout tables that make sense to the ear and the eye, so people listening to your Web site or looking at it on a text-only display will be able to find the information they need and understand what it means. You'll learn how to design Web forms that people can interact with via the keyboard (or any assistive technology device that translates user input into keystrokes--including voice recognition), and you'll learn how to label your forms so that people who use talking browsers know what information they need to give you. You'll learn what you need to do to make scripts accessible to people who don't use a mouse, and how to decide which multimedia player is best for your purposes and your audience. You'll learn how you can create simple PDF files that are accessible to people with disabilities. And you'll learn how to use Cascading Style Sheets to make your pages look great and be accessible!

If you're new to accessibility, we suggest that you start with Section 1 to learn about what accessibility is and why it's important. If you're a Web developer, you may want to read the user experience chapters before moving on to the how-to chapters in Section 2. (We've even provided a handy chart to show you which accessibility guidelines and standards are covered in each chapter, so if you're interested in specific issues, use the chart to follow up.) Managers and others who commission Web sites may want to pay special attention to the chapters on accessibility in law and policy and on the business case for accessibility. Those who teach Web authoring will find the detailed examples and explanations throughout the book especially useful.

Maximum Accessibility has many features to help you learn what you need to know. It offers

• In-depth coverage of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 and the Section 508 federal accessibility standards for the Internet.
• Information on building a strong business case for accessibility.
• Detailed user experience narratives that bring accessibility barriers to life.
• Best practices in accessible design.
• Screen shots, screen-reader transcripts, and code examples that provide in-depth understanding.
• How-to chapters that demonstrate the process of thinking through design problems with accessibility in mind.
• Up-to-date information about assistive technologies and design techniques.

After reading this book, you'll become a more valuable resource to colleagues in your organization and to your community. You'll have up-to-date knowledge of accessibility guidelines and standards and how they apply to your situation. You'll be able to solve accessibility problems--before users with disabilities point them out! You'll know how to write accessibility into requirements documents, requests for quotes, and contracts. Your Web sites will provide more satisfying experiences for more people. And you'll gain insight into one of the most interesting and challenging issues of our time: how to enable people with disabilities to participate fully in and contribute to society.

0201774224P08282002

---

Customer Reviews

The best book around on accessibility
This book beats the others I've seen hands down. Not only does it explain exactly what the problems are; it also tells you how to go about fixing them, in detail, including code solutions in some places. Where there aren't solutions it presents very useful workarounds.

The W3C guidelines only take you so far. This book gets you to the next level, and helps you start thinking the right way so you can solve new problems that come up in a similar fashion.

Now, if someone would only write a book on making web sites *usable* for people with disabilities (not just accessible), we'd be laughing.

excellent & still relevant
Internet technologies, from back end to user-end, change by the second, and the moment a book about network communications is drafted, it's already out-of-date. But "Maximum Accessibility" remains relevant year after year. It's principles regarding accessible technology are timeless, and its detailed advice is easily adaptable to the emerging networking tech of today. Were I to write a job description for a manager or designer of an online presence of any kind, web site or otherwise, I would want every applicant to have read this book and have a copy near their desk at all times. Whether you believe in accessibility from a human rights perspective or a good business practice, "Maximum Accessibility" is the book for you. And if you *don't* understand accessibility, but want to, "Maximum Accessibility" is also the book for you.