Hi everyone, I'm weighing into this thread late, but wanted to make a couple of quick comments.
I agree with Chris' point that accessibility isn't only for the benefit of people with disabilities; it provides all kinds of value to everyone who uses the Web. Perhaps you've heard of the "electronic curb-cut effect:" when sidewalks were redesigned to provide accessibility for wheelchairs, this change had a direct benefit on people using strollers, shopping carts, rollerblades, and so on. Everyone wins. Similarly, accessible Web applications have a major impact on everyone: sites are easier to navigate, to search, to repurpose, and can be viewed on a wide variety of devices. You'll notice that many of the W3C's accessibility guidelines are just good general design principles! Bottom line: accessibility makes the Web better. I also think it is quite feasible to make our sites--and our JavaScript toolkits--accessible to a broad range of needs and abilities. I'm working on the Fluid Project, which is dedicated to improving DHTML usability and accessibility. Excitingly, we just received a grant from the Mozilla Foundation to help the jQuery community make jQuery more accessible. We hope this will include keyboard navigation, ARIA semantics for assistive technologies, high contrast support, and more. Colin On 15-Feb-08, at 4:41 PM, Chris wrote: > (Also, keep in mind that accessibility isn't only for the benefit of > people with disabilities: Having an accessible site is one of the most > robust search engine optimization strategies.) --- Colin Clark Technical Lead, Fluid Project http://fluidproject.org
