Just this afternoon, Michael Seidel and I did a brief presentation to a group of web designers, outlining a process to better fuse user experience with design and development. The intent of this process is to raise awareness in the value of user experience every step of the way, from the initial wireframing through web site/page creation, and continually even after it is launched.

One key point we made – user experience isn’t one step in the process, to be executed once and checked off. It’s pervasive.

Web accessibility goes hand in hand with user experience. After all, what is accessibility but building experiences that are usable for everybody?

That also means that web accessibility isn’t a checkbox on your to-do list. It isn’t a singular task that you “do” and move on. It’s constant.

It’s something you think about when:

• you are card-sorting the key elements of a web site.
• you build wireframes of the information you’re presenting.
• you consider color contrasts, typography and layout while designing the page.
• you enter every single line of CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Flash, etcetera
• you ask users — disabled and non-disabled — to test out your new web experience and share what works and what doesn’t.

User experience and accessibility aren’t individual tasks at one specific point in time. They are ways of thinking that carry through every aspect necessary to build a web site or page.

Don’t marginalize either by ignoring them or relegating them to one tiny line item in your project.

Tags: user experience, ux, web accessibility, web design

I just realized that I’m fast approaching my one year anniversary of blogging about web accessibility. Time sure flies! I’ve learned a lot about the subject, discovered many very impressive, admirable figures through other blogs and social media like Twitter, and all around have had a lot of fun.

Here are just a couple of the lessons and insights I’ve gained about web accessibility, blogging, and developing a web presence in general. I’ll be posting more over the days leading up to November 12th, one year after I made my first entry.

Blogging is not as easy as it sounds
I figured that getting into a routine and blog-blog-blogging away would be a breeze. I’ve since learned  that effective, consistent blogging is a commitment. The challenge of posting often — but posting quality material — can be overwhelming.

I asked a few bloggers what the magic number is for volume of posting. I got one answer that 2-3 per week was a good, realistic goal. Another answer was 2-3 per month. The former struck me as too much; the latter too infrequent.

I set my own goal to be one post per week. There have been stretches of time I’ve been really good about it; there have been plenty in which I’ve faltered. In particular, since late July I’ve really slowed down. Life, work, and all that good stuff gets in the way.

WordPress is awesome
My foray into blogging showed me firsthand how great WordPress is. From the easy-as-can-be dashboard to slick plugins like Akismet (holy cow does the spam come pounding at the gates!), All in One SEO Pack, Sociable and Bookmarkify, WordPress really has impressed me.

All I did was find a simple enough theme, and work my own design into the markup and CSS. In the matter of a couple days, my blog was designed and ready to go. Using GoDaddy as hosting made it even easier, since WordPress is one of many applications they have an auto-download feature for.

Currently, I’m trying WordPress as a CMS for a non-blog site I’m designing and creating, for a freelance project. In that scenario, it’s been easy going as well.

Google Analytics offers a whole lot for a free product
Despite never having been a “math guy”, I’ve always had a weird fascination with stats and numbers. When I was a kid, I used to run entire seasons of a made-up 30-team baseball league with Micro League Baseball II on my Mac Plus. Not only that, I manually kept track of all the stats for  every team, every game! Similarly, to this day, one of the aspects I dig most about games like Madden NFL is the tracking of stats season to season

I’m glad that I set up Google Analytics right away on this blog. My traffic has been modest, and goes up and down (currently down because of the aforementioned mini-hiatus I’ve taken!), but it’s always interesting to track how many visitors I’m getting, what countries they hail from, what keywords they are using, and what browsers and operating systems power their journey.

“web accessibility iphone” and “expedia accessibility” have by far been my top keywords, but 664 total have enabled visitors to reach this neck of the woods.

More thoughts and insights to come soon. For those of you reading this entry, I give tremendous thanks for the time, attention and interest!

Tags: blogging, google analytics, web accessibility, WordPress

Back in April, Jared Smith at WebAIM posted “Accessibility Blog Roundup II“, a list of noteworthy blogs that cover web accessibility. I was already following some of the suggested sites, but overall I found the post to be incredibly useful.

I thought I would follow suit with a listing of the accessibility-focused sites that I currently frequent. I use Bloglines for feed reading, and this is pretty much my whole “Accessibility” list.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of the best sites out there. I would absolutely love getting comments recommending others of note.

In no particular order:

• WebAIM Blog by Jared Smith et al
• Do It Myself Blog by Glenda Watson
• Web Axe by Dennis Lembree and Ross Johnson
• Accessites.org (The Art of Accessibility)
• Action for blind people by Sandi Wassmer, Kevin Nuttall et al
• Adobe Accessibility blog
• All Access Blogging (Tips for making your blog more accessible to people with disabilities)
• iheni :: making the web worldwide by Henny Swan
• Box of Chocolates by Derek Featherstone
• Bruce Lawson’s blog
• Digital Likeness by Andrea Hill
• Dingo Access by Roger Hudson
• Dotjay by Jon Gibbins
• Accessible Web Design by Joe Dolson
• Learning the World by Martin Kliehm
• Oz by Glenda Sims
• Wait Till I Come! by Chris Heilmann
• Beast-Blog by Mike Cherim
• Accessibility Tips by Mike Davies
• web output by Dirk Ginader
• 456 Berea Street by Roger Johansson

Tags: accessibility, accessibility blogs, web accessibility