AccessiWatch offers the following links for the week of December 16th, 2011:

1. 4 Rules of Readability and Accessibility in Web Design
2. An accessible, keyboard friendly custom select menu
3. Back to Basics: Skip to Main Content Links
4. How Do Blind People Use the iPhone?
5. IMS Guidelines for Developing Accessible Learning Applications
6. Social networks and accessibility: A rather sad picture
7. The Hidden Nuggets of WCAG2: When Not to Use ALT Attributes
8. The Social Factors of Website Accessibility
9. UN report highlights need to make television more accessible to persons with disabilities
10. WebAnywhere

AccessiWatch - Advocating Web accessibility and social inclusion for people with disabilities on the Web. One link at a time.

WebAnywhere has been initialized and is now ready to use. WebAnywhere is a non-visual interface to the web that requires no new software to be downloaded or installed. It works right in the browser, which means you can access it from any computer, even locked-down public computer terminals. WebAnywhere enables you to interact with the web in a similar way to how you may have used other screen readers, such as JAWS or Window-Eyes.

http://webanywhere.cs.washington.edu/wa.php

Closed captioning and signing for the deaf, audio description and audio captions for the visually impaired, and accessible remote control devices for the elderly and those with reduced dexterity are some of the accessibility options highlighted in the report. Accessible TV should be a fundamental tool in building inclusive societies, said ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=40626&Cr=disability&Cr1=

The arguments discussing social factors often revolve around the sentiment that "Accessibility is the right thing to do". I cannot argue with this at all. Accessibility is the right thing to do. I believe in this and that is why I do what I do. But is this a Business Case? Well, turns out it sort of is, as it fits squarely within Corporate Social Responsibility. CSR is a broad topic – far too broad for this blog post – but the implication as it relates to the accessibility business case is that having an accessible website will make you more money because it increases positive regard for your company.

http://www.karlgroves.com/2011/11/04/the-social-factors-of-accessibility/

So, just when should you not use an ALT attribute? Short answer: never. You must always have an ALT attribute if you have an IMG element. Always. No ifs, no buts, no maybes. But WCAG2 Says... I have developers come to me and insist that WCAG2 says it’s okay not to have an ALT attribute.

http://www.sitepoint.com/the-hidden-nuggets-of-wcag2-when-not-to-use-alt-attr...

In recent months, several popular social networks relaunched or updated their services, and one new player came out onto the plain field that, initially hyped, now is hardly talked about any more. Unfortunately, what all these have in common, is a great number of problems when it comes to accessibility. This is not just for the blind and visually impaired, but also considering people with other kinds of disabilities. The less good the markup in general, the less assistive technologies of any kind will work, and the less likely people with varying disabilities will be able to use them successfully to interact with others.

http://www.marcozehe.de/2011/12/08/social-networks-and-accessibility-a-rather...

This section focuses on specific domains of content that depend heavily on modes of presentation that fall outside of the bounds of pure text. It should be noted that every learner stands to benefit from content made accessible to those with disabilities, particularly with respect to the specific topic areas under consideration in this chapter. For example, mainstream users of the Web rarely get access to "live" mathematics, and many users of content on the Web find it difficult to comprehend mathematical content. Many of the support strategies devised to make mathematical content more accessible to those with disabilities also provide support to the larger student population.

http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/accessiblevers/sec11.html

There is more and more talk about the accessibility of iPhones and iPads. For blind and visually impaired people, it is one of the most accessible devices. But have you wondered how they can access it when all it has is a touch screen? One of the great advantages of an iPhone is that accessibility features are built in, and people don't have to purchase a separate screen reader. The built in screen reader is called VoiceOver. Any time you purchase an iPhone, all you have to do is hitting the home key three times quickly to start the VoiceOver, and hit the home key three times again to turn it off.

http://www.evengrounds.com/blog/how-blind-people-use-iphone

One of the earliest solutions in all of web accessibility was the "skip to main content" link, a same page link at the top of the page that enables users to skip past navigation links and go straight to the main content of the web page. Despite the fact that these links have been in use since the early 1990's, they actually aren't implemented well at all by browsers. They can be a huge benefit to sighted non-mousers (navigating by keyboard) but they don't work for these users in any browser other than Firefox and Internet Explorer, and they don't even work in IE unless link targets have tabindex="0". This blog post discusses all of this, and ultimately proposes a simple JQuery solution that makes same-page links work beautifully in all browsers.

http://terrillthompson.com/blog/161

I’ve always been wary of styling form elements too much. Possible usability and accessibility issues, browser quirks, and the fact that the CSS specification does not define form control styling are the main reasons. With that said, sometimes you have to do things you don’t really want to. Like styling select elements, which I’ve recently had to find a way to do. There are quite a few workarounds for doing this out there. However, most of the ones I looked at replace the select element with a bunch of links which changes semantics and behaviour a bit too much for my tastes.

http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201111/an_accessible_keyboard_friendly_...

This article is more of a “plea” to web designers. Don’t look at a web page as a work of art. Look on it as something that does a job and, for God’s sake, make it legible! Too many times we see readability sacrificed at the alter of web design. But first, some statistics for you to think about: Nearly 26.6 million Americans (nearly 9%) are visually impaired, meaning their vision cannot be completely corrected with lenses. 1 in 12 people in the world (over 8%) suffer some sort of color blindness. Here are 4 rules about readability and accessibility on websites.

http://robcubbon.com/readability-accessibility-web-design/