Building accessible web sites hands on
Overview
This course is designed for those already familiar with web design and the basics of (x)HTML and CSS
who need to grasp both the theory and hands on practice for designing and developing accessible web sites.
You will explore the law and guidelines governing accessibility and learn how to audit
sites for access conformance. You will also learn to build sophisticated accessible sites that focus on
alternatives and features that aid those with difficulties accessing the web. People in a management role may like to consider the “conforming to accessibility” course.
The course is available on both Mac and PC systems.
Required skills and experience.
- A reasonable understanding of web page mark up (html or xhtml) - you don't need to know how to code every tag.
- The basics of CSS and web design theory.
- Some knowledge of different web browsers and cross browser compatibility.
- Conceptual knowledge of javascript - even if you can't code it.
- Basic knowledge of Flash design issues.
- Conceptual knowledge of delivering multimedia via web pages.
- A good working knowledge of either the Windows or Mac operating systems.
Duration
2 Days.
Standard course price
£450 pp excluding VAT
For more information on pricing please go to my rates page.
Day one
Introduction
Background to accessibility
- About the W3C
- Development of WAI guidelines
- Why be accessible anyway?
- Overview of the current legal perspective
Who has access issues?
- Identifying key disability groups
- Understanding the challenges disabled users face online
- Overview of technologies used by people with disabilities
Understanding the WAI guidelines
- How the guidelines are structured
- Rationale for dividing guidelines into degrees of priority
- Review of priority one guidelines
- Review of priority two guidelines
- Review of priority three guidelines
- Using The W3C accessibility checklist
- Identifying the right level of accessibility
Clean structured pages
- About web standards
- XHTML syntax, options and versions
- Structuring XHTML pages
- Removing presentational elements
- Working with the DOCTYPE
- Understanding natural language declarations
- Converting and moving to XHTML
- Validating code for standards compliance
Adding structure to content
- Creating headings and sub headings
- Creating paragraphs
- Working with special characters
- Creating line breaks
- Creating horizontal rules
- Adding lists – ordered, unordered and definition
Auditing your site
- Auditing your site
- Text only browsers and a view of your site
- About bobby and other access checking tools
- Reading the results of a bobby or wave test
Questions and answers
Day two
Dreamweaver and accessibility
- Setting Dreamweaver accessibility features
- Setting up Dreamweaver for standards compliance
Working with images
- Separate content images from design images
- Adding TITLE, ALT and LONGDESC tags
- Client side image maps
- Colour issues
Issues with tables
- What’s the problem with tables anyway
- Using tables for layout (or not)
- Using div tags instead of tables
- Removing layout tables
- Using tables for data
- Styling tables
Building accessible web forms
- Creating a basic input form
- Adding form fields, radio buttons and check boxes
- Using legend, label and fieldset tags
- Adding submit and reset buttons
- Using form methods
- Making the form work with actions
- Styling the form with CSS
Building accessible navigation
- Use images or text
- Structuring a text based navigation menu
- Restyling text for navigation
- Restyling text to make buttons
- Using divs (layers) for drop downs
- Issues with Javascript for drop downs
- Making navigation devise independent
- Skipping over navigation menus
- Identifying and formatting in line links
Accessible flash
- Issues with Flash and accessibility
- Designing accessible flash
- Making flash input devise independent
- Alternatives to Flash
- Embedding flash into pages
Accessible multimedia
Questions and answers