useful resources for accessible design and programming

[jadelennox]

I thought it might be nice to put together a list of useful resources for accessible design, universal design, and accessible web programming. I don't want to link only to the w3c pages, because firstly those pages are more about defining standards than about providing tutorials, and secondly because they are about generalizable standards and don't delve into the complexities of different users' needs. One thing which is frustratingly rare in the programming-for-accessibility community is programmers or testers with disabilities.

Lately, I've been getting some incredibly valuable input from WebAIM. I particularly like their survey of screen reader users' preferences, which reveals that there's a lot less consistency of use among screen reader users with disabilities than one would suspect. Their e-mail discussion list has also been full of useful and relevant information.

How about you guys? Do you have favorite resources for answering accessible design, accessible programming, and universal design questions? We could put together a nice list on the wiki of our favorite resources.

Comments

[afuna]

Mm, not so much a technical resource, but I have this bookmarked to reread whenever I feel the urge to compromise because it's "easier": http://www.alistapart.com/articles/the-inclusion-principle/

[jadelennox]

that's a great article, and we should definitely do something with it. I sometimes have issues with A List Apart's technical documents, but as a general manifesto that's fantastic.

[jeshyr]

WebAIM is definitely top of my list too! After that W3C but yeah it's too academic. I especially find the parts of the WebAIM website which show best practices for various things to be useful.

Sorry, nothing to add! Just a yes :)

[jadelennox]

hey, yesses are valuable, too. :-)

[dancinglights]

(I just wandered over from trouble's roundup post. hello)

The US government has a site called Section 508, referencing Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, requiring Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. They have a Tools and Resources section with its own link roundup that might be helpful.

I'm just getting into this myself, as I've just volunteered to make some federally-funded web pages compliant with 508 as part of my job. I will definitely be checking back here and on WebAIM. Thank you guys for doing this!

[jadelennox]

thank you!

Just last week there was this long discussion on the webaim list (I think it was there, anyway) about how section 508 is a lot less relevant in the days of Web 2.0 applications. *headdesk* We've finally got people understanding section 508, almost!

Thank you for the link section, there, I hadn't seen it on their site.