Good Books That I Recently Read
Many well-intended accessibility books preach fire and brimstone. The smell of sulfur does not inspire designers. All too frequently, these books contain only visually ugly or completely unrealistic examples of accessible sites, along with impractical advice such as “never specify type sizes.” Some authors in the field are hostile to design. Others have no experience in developing commercial sites. Designers might come away from these books believing that accessibility is irrelevant.
Other books are well researched and fueled by passionate insight. These are worth the devotee’s time. But they are not recommended for the general web professional because they are pitched at readers who live with one or more disabilities. In serving that readership, these books spend much time presenting alternate input methods and assessing the merits and demerits of alternative user agents.
Designers are likely to feel alienated if not unconsciously fearful that somehow they too will be afflicted. Fear of blindness, paralysis, and other disabilities partly fuels some designers’ discomfort with the very concept of accessibility, and such books will not help designers shirk that prejudice.
I recommend the following:
• Building Accessible Web Sites, by Joe Clark (New Riders: 2002)
Not merely the best and most complete book yet penned on the subject of web accessibility, Joe Clark’s Building Accessible Web Sites is also among the most compellingly written web design books ever: witty, opinionated, and truthful. In my strange line of work, I see most new design books and many new computer books.
Few are complete, fewer still are entirely lucid, and with very few indeed do I feel that I am in the hands of a master communicator. I devoured Clark’s book as if it were the latest Harry Potter novel. Then I read it again. Not only will you learn everything you need to know from this book, but you can actually read it for pleasure.
Building Accessible Web Sites covers it all, from the basics of writing usable alt attributes to the complexities of captioning rich media. Joe Clark, whom the Atlantic Monthly called “the king of closed captions,” has spent 20 years in the field of media access, and it shows.
He is uniquely positioned to guide the reader clearly and confidently from the big picture to the smallest detail offering phased accessibility strategies that fit any budgetary or time constraint, and straight talk that clarifies regulations and debunks myths. Moreover, Clark cares as much about design aesthetics as access, and he shows how the two are compatible. As with Eric Meyer on CSS (I recommend this book unreservedly.
• Constructing Accessible Web Sites, various authors (Peer Information, Inc.formerly Glasshaus: 2002)
Written by multiple subject matter experts including Jim Thatcher, Shawn Lawton Henry (a WAI member and contributor to WCAG), Paul Bohman, and Michael Burks, this task-focused book is like a wonderful compendium of best-of-breed magazine articles, each of which covers in thoroughly researched and practical detail a particular aspect of the access puzzle.
Among other subjects covered, Constructing Accessible Web Sites includes vital material on the limitations of push-button accessibility testing software, discusses feasible methods of implementing accessibility across large enterprises, and provides detailed tips on accessible Flash authoring.
Although it lacks the Clark book’s advantage of a single, authorial voice, the chorus that Constructing Accessible Web Sites offers instead is compelling in its own right. Both books demand space on the shelf of anyone who designs, builds, owns, or manages websites. Among other benefits, reading these two books will help overturn many mistaken and sadly widespread ideas such as those we are about to discuss.
May 26th, 2010 at 12:30 am
Printing West Palm Beach…
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