Avoiding the Gray Areas

I just caught the last of Shawn Henry’s SXSW panel. Key takeway- there are white areas of things that are good to do for accessibility and black areas of things that are bad for accessibility- avoid worrying about the gray area in the middle. She mentioned the ability of web accessibility experts to endlessly debate the ins and outs of alt text. For example:

• Should alt text be used to paint a thousand words?
• Mini-FAQ about the alternate text of images
• Alt Text, Less Can be More
• “Alt Text” search on WebAIM Discussion List
• Search fo “alt text” on The Web Accessibility Initiative Interest Group (WAI IG) mailing list

These discussions are helpful and essential for establishing best practices. However, these discussions are harmful to the extent that a developer becomes tied up arguing about “gray areas” instead of building accessible content.

SXSW Accessibility Panels

I’m headed to Austin tomorrow, here is a list of some of the presentations specifically on accessibility:

• Catching up with Accessibility: The Basics QuicklyShawn Henry.
• Accessible Rich Media by Sharron Rush, Susan Gerhart, Becky Gibson and Lisa Pappas
• Everything I Know About Accessibility I Learned From Star Wars by Derek Featherstone
• Cooking up Accessible Video for the Web by Pat Ramsey
• Core Conversation: How Accessible Should Your Site Be? by Jeff Beckham
• Targeting Your Web Site: Accessibility Litigation Update by Anitra Pavka and Michael Wasylik

In addition there are sessions on internationalization, web standards and the ongoing browser wars. Audio from each of the sessions will be recorded and at some point made available on the website.

Any sessions that I missed? I hope to see some of you there, you can get in touch with me here.