Share your accessibility tips and questions

In TechSoup's article Four Web Accessibility Myths — Busted, accessibility experts help clarify (and debunk) persistent myths about accessible Web development.

Have additional tips that might help other nonprofits, or additional questions about accessibility? Share them here.

This is simple and in some ways not really an accessibility tip, more of a general design grouse. A lot of programs use Times New Roman as the default font and a lot of users never bother changing it.

Times New Roman is great for print, that is what it was designed for but it is not good for reading on screen. For use on screen a font such as Arial, Sans Serif or Verdana is a much better choice. It is amazing how often this seems to get overlooked.

Pete Cheer

File this one under online strategy:

Concerned over access issues for our public health messages, we have begun cultivating public health administrators in outside groups to help get our messages to "priority" or "underserved" populations. Through these program managers web downloadable or printer friendly web resources are shared to help extend our reach.

Doing so helped drive an increase in permissions requests for our print resources, as well.

So - rather than focus on the accessibility issue of those who are note online - we have been concentrating on how to use the web as a platform to extend access (through those who directly serve those who are not online).

I found the following very helpful:

http://web.mit.edu/atic/www/accessibility/developweb.html

Unfortunately, in my view, there are many ways to approach accessibility, and differing degrees of priority to give web accessibility, and many times when the costs of improving accessibility impinges on a preferrable appearance. Deciding early in a project on the level of emphasis and the acceptable level of constraint that web accessibility will play in the overall web development project will help. Most nonprofits I've worked with want to make a site look just right in the primary browsers, and unless there is strong discipline, and the willingness to design with web accessibility in mind from the get-go, visual techniques that work against web accessibility are likely to be insisted upon, and retrofits to accomodate web accessibility can be problematic.