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We'll be designing a site shortly that must allow accessibility for
disabled individuals. I'll be using Lynx as my text browser and I've
done extensive reading on the standards I've got to meet. Canada has
their own standards, I believe in the states it's like article 508 or
something like that. What
have your experiences been in designing accessible sites? Did you find
that it extended your production time? Once you met the standards, did
you keep meeting them on subsequent projects? Considering our aging population, this will be becoming a more and more pressing topic in years to come. "Designing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen has a wonderful chapter on this particular topic. From his book: "In the U.S. alone, there are more than 30 million people who have some such problem." "Note: Disabilities Associated with Aging
Those
of us who plan to be around for a few more years also have personal
reasons to promote accessibility because as we get older, we will
experience more disabilities ourselves. Estimates are that only 14
percent of people who are younger than 65 years have some kind of
functional impairment, compared to 50 percent of those older than 65.
Fortunately, many of these impairments are either minor or don’t
interfere much with current web use (for example, reduced hearing).
It’s definitely worth remembering what awaits us as we get older. Let’s
design a world that will be good for us."
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