This was definitely a smart move as I landed my next three jobs because I knew about Section 508. Then something more happened. As I began working on sites to make them accessible to all, I began meeting and interviewing people with different needs and asking them how they use the web and what they’d like to see improved. This led to epiphany number 1: These people were just like me.

I know that doesn’t sound good, but I grew up in a primarily white, upper middle class, east coast community. I went to an expensive art school in college, that despite being in NYC had very few minorities I was exposed to because it was so expensive and offered few scholarships at the time. I thought “disabled” meant “couldn’t do something”. But it didn’t. In fact it’s a horrid word to use.

One person I know can’t see. But he can navigate most of his world through hearing. Can you do that? I can’t. His ear for music justifies headphones and speakers worth hundreds of dollars. Mine can’t justify $50 headphones. He types at least twice as fast as I can because I rely too much on seeing the keyboard. Which one of us is “disabled”? I think we are differently abled.

So with this in mind, I began to reach out to people of this marginalized community to get to know them more. And then I had epiphany number 2: These people are brilliant and amazing. Actually that doesn’t encompass it well enough, the are BRILLIANT and AMAZING. Yes, all caps is needed here.

The people I met are super intelligent, creative, patient, passionate and compassionate. They have discovered methods and tools to accomplish many of their goals, which are usually the same as yours and mine. Yet, despite being able to prove the desire and skill to do what drives them for a living, they are denied employment.

That’s the dream: To build a design and development agency comprised primarily of people that have the skills but are denied the opportunity because something allows the government to call them “disabled”, because they are not. Now I know this is easier said than done. First, it would be a virtual agency as these folks are spread across the country. It would take significant investment to make sure the team would have all the tools needed to do the job and some of those adaptive tools will get expensive. It will take understanding clients because the speed of delivery will be vastly different than that of traditional agency. It will take account managers and project managers that can keep it all on track. But there isn’t a reason why these people can’t work, they just need the tools and the opportunity. If you are interested in helping me build this, contact me, I know developers, designers, and security people I’d like to give jobs to.

*Comments are off due to the amount of trolling and spam I see. Please connect with me on twitter or by email on this post.

I’m not that ambitious, but I am going to use it to kick off a project (and hopefully complete the first draft) I have been wanting to do for close to a year. I am going to write a book on building the web for everyone. The internet, and technology in general, is a great equalizer in our society. Anyone can log on and order food, gadgets, clothes. You can create a blog and become the next investigative journalist. You can meet people around the world and communicate with them without being judged on your appearance or the way ou talk. But not all of it can be used by everyone because if was built with weaknesses. The weaknesses don’t need to exist, we can build it better, faster, stronger.

If you have ever felt that something about the web was difficult to use because of any personal hurdles, I want to talk to you. I want to hear your stories of obstacles, and hopefully how you overcame them. And if you didn’t overcome them, I want to know how you think they might be overcome. If reasonable, we (I mean you, me and anyone else I need help from) will try to build a prototype before the book gets published to see if we can make the web more accessible to you.

So, jump over to my contact page and call me, Skype me, email me (which ever is easiest for you), and we will set up a time to interview you. I’d like to do Skype or in person as I want to record the video possibly for future use and transcribing. Oh, anyone know how to record a Skype video call?

The vestibular system includes the parts of the inner ear and brain that process sensory information involved with controlling balance and eye movements. If disease or injury damages these processing areas, vestibular disorders can result.  Vestibular disorders can also result from or be worsened by genetic or environmental conditions, or occur for unknown reasons.

Vestibular disorders are issues with balance. According to Marissa, it is like being drunk all the time in that you are dizzy, have a loss of balance, and headaches. These family of diseases affect 1% of the population which is roughly 3 million people here in the United States. Currently there are no tools to simulate what it is like to have a vestibular disorder for web designers & developers.

Marissa says that when designing sites to avoid the following:

• Blinking and flashing elements (similar to designing for those with epilepsy)
• No loud noises
• No Flash animations or moving elements
• Avoid backgrounds that can cause optical illusions like checkerboards, swirling patterns or Las Vegas carpet style graphics

Update

Marissa was gracious enough to comment below and included some more accurate numbers from VEDA:

“Approximately four percent (almost eight million) of American adults report a chronic problem (lasting three months or longer) with balance, while an additional 1.1 percent (2.4 million) of American adults report a chronic problem with dizziness alone.”

While at this time the federal government has not made it mandatory or criminal if you do not, the larger your company is the more likely it could face a civil trial. Target Corporation has been through a suit filed by the American Council of the Blind in which the ACB won $6 million dollars and forced Target to accommodate the blind and visually impaired on their website. The ACB isn’t suing everyone, but they are pushing to make Section 508 a civil rights law rather than a government regulation.

Section 508 subsection 1194.22 of the ADA is the portion of the law that addresses accessibility for things from computers to software to the internet. According to the law the only people required to implement Section 508 are those providing services or product to or on behalf of the government (federal, state and local). If your company provides a product or service to a private company that is contracting with the government and that product or service will be the contracted interface representing the government, then you are obligated to adhere by Section 508 as well.

If you are not in one of these situations, but have a consumer facing web site that MIGHT be used by someone with a disability you should be following the law.

So without further ado…

Do…

• Provide at least one font size larger than your default. Users can increase size with their browser, but if you provide a link you can do it without breaking design which increases usability.
• Provide a high contrast mode. If that majority of your text and links aren’t black or dark blue text on white, give the user this option. You can do white text on black, but limit this to menus or highlight areas as it is harder to read long text.
• Provide alternate, title, or long description text for all non-text elements with a message. This includes images conveying a message (not spacer or decoration), multimedia, and form fields. If the alternate text (alt) is longer than 50 characters, use the long description (longdesc).
• Use tables for displaying tabular data only. This means if you think the presentation is best in a spreadsheet, use a table.
• Provide a summary for all tables using the “summary” attribute.
• Better than alternate text, use labels on all form elements. Do this by adding the “for” attribute to the label with the value equaling the id of the field it ties to. If the label doesn’t work, put the title on the field.
• Provide a link at the top to skip repeat navigation for the keyboard navigators.
• Provide a link at the bottom to take the user to the top.
• Instead of using a drop down for multiple select items, use check boxes (have you tried multi-selecting a drop down using a keyboard to navigate?)
• Any emphasis made using color, should also be understood without color. Bold it, underline it, box it, but just add something other than color alone.
• Provide accessible text versions of multimedia presentations that sync with the presentation.
• Make your pages so that they make sense when no style sheet is applied. This means navigation at the top, followed by content. Use headers to separate your content like a outline.
• Provide redundant links if you use a server side image map. Better yet, use a client side image map or none at all.
• Provide a header row and header column to all tables. Make sure that all the data cells and header cells relate appropriately if there are two or more logical levels of headers.
• Title all frames so that they can be identified and navigated easily.
• Make sure that if your page flickers, that it is between 2Hz and 55Hz.
• Make sure that any items relying on scripting to display can also be accessed when scripting is turned off.
• Provide a method to reset or extend time limits if a timed response is required.
• Provide a link to any plug-ins or applets needed to view the content you provide. These should also be hosted on compliant pages and be compliant themselves.
• Provide a text only version of the site if no other accessible alternate is available.
• Test your project in prototype form before implementing it.
• Use sans-serif fonts for long sections of text. These read better than serif fonts like Times New Roman when on a screen.

Don’t…

• Know if something is accessible? Try using it with a screen reader like JAWS and you will know. Close your eyes and forget the mouse to see how you do.
• Put blue or red text on black or black on blue or red.
• Make a Flash only site. Provide a text based version.

Resources

• Color blind check http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/
• Guidelines http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/
• Access Checklist http://www.access-star.org/ITI-VPAT-v1.3.html#webdetails
• Color blind add-on for Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5001
• JAWS screen reader http://www.freedomscientific.com/products/fs/jaws-product-page.asp

By introducing Safari on Windows Apple has introduced the SDK (as they call it) for the iPhone. Developers won’t be able to make their apps run directly on the phone and must use AJAX instead(Flash is reportedly not going to be supported). Having Safari on Windows will allow the vast majority of developers to make sure their application will run on Safari’s JavaScript. Now hopefully a developer will make sure it works in all versions of JavaScript on all major browsers, but Apple doesn’t care about that.

In addition to this, Apple is showing that it is doing something Microsoft has decided to undo. Apple is opening more than iTunes to the other OS. I expect by the time Leopard launches we will see Windows versions of iWork and iLife. I don’t expect major applications like Final Cut or Apeture to show up, but remember Apple dropped “computer” from its name. Microsoft has restricted its applications to VMware and Office, but the deal on Office is only for 4 more years. Watch that go away by then.

Last but not least, this is a great opportunity for the small web designer/developer to now test their application and site on all the major browsers without having to shell out for an additional computer. Not everyone can afford a Mac, nor do they want to use a Mac. Now they don’t have to. They can install Safari and use it for testing purposes.

Now is it the best browser? I don’t think so. It has usability issues (I found another issue today in that you can’t use backspace to go back in browsing history like ALL other browsers). I personally prefer Firefox with its extensions and themes. but I would pick Safari over IE because I know the CSS I write will work.

Update: Issue number 4 and a reason to have it on Windows. WordPress’s WYSIWYG editor for writing posts doesn’t seem to work properly. I only have Code version available to me while writing this post from inside Safari. It looks like WordPress is one of those small teams that need to test their JavaScript to see that it is compatible with Safari.

How Long it Takes to Get Listed

Every search engine is different. In order to be found in the search engines you need to be listed, and they do this by indexing your site. Indexing consists of the search engine crawling your site looking at all of the content on it. They do not see images, only text and links. The search engines then stores that data for quick reference and classifies your site based on the content it finds. They go further to apply complex algorithms to grade your site. In order to be found you must have relevant content to the search performed and have a grade that results in a ranking high on the list.

Typically you will not get indexed with a search engine for at least 30 days. However it can take up to 6 months to get listed in their indexes. However, this does not mean you will be found.

How to Find Out if You are Listed

Go to www.google.com and type in “site:” followed by your complete website address (include the www) and click on Google Search. The result will be a listing of only those pages Google has indexed.

Go to www.yahoo.com and in the search box type in “site:http://” followed by your complete website address (include the www) and click search. The result will be the list of pages Yahoo! has indexed. Next to the number of pages on the left hand side you will also see Inlinks. This is Yahoo!’s term for Back Links discussed below.

How to Optimize your Site for Search Engine Traffic

Internal Links

When creating links inside your site, be sure to use phrases that describe the destination. Do not use the words “Click Here”, but focus on phrases like “ATV Accessories”. This enhances usability because the customer now knows where they are going. In addition, these words are granted greater importance by the search engines as keywords.

Text Content

Write for your customers and not computers. Focus on concise well written messages you need to deliver to your customers. Try and keep everything short and scanable. If you feel a particular phrase is important, bold it or make it a link to more details. The average customer spends 5 minutes on a website. In that time they do not want to spend it reading War and Peace. Try to keep ideas to one paragraph.

Content Ratios

Any keywords used in your Meta Tags, need to be used in your website text content. Ideally the ratio should be no more than 7% of the total text content should be your keywords, but they should be used at least 3 times. If you use 8 words in your meta tags, then they should be used 24 times in your body text. The total word count for your body text should be 343.

Any more than this or writing the keywords in long continuous strings that are not reader friendly is picked up by the search engines and penalized.

Meta Tags

While keywords are important to have, don’t let anyone convince you they are the end all be all for search engine placement. They can break you more than make you. If you use something in your keywords and not in the site, you will be penalized. While there is no limit on how many you can have, can you imagine writing enough text and to make sure you don’t exceed the 7% level for the keywords you do use? Would your customers read that text if it was there?

The best advice here is to pick up to 8 keywords or phrases to include. Then narrow the focus of your text to emphasize your expertise in those keywords. It will be easier on your customers and more effective in the search engine.

More important that the keywords Meta Tag is the description Meta Tag. This is your chance to shine out from the pack. The description content is the sentence or two you see under the link when doing a search on Yahoo or MSN (Google takes actual text from the page). Here you can deliver why someone should buy from you before they even arrive on your site. Find 1-2 sentences (14-20 words) that are extremely concise and descriptive to input here. Remember this is your first chance to hook the customer.

How to Draw More Search Engine Traffic

So you have worked on optimizing your text, written quality (not quantity) unique text, and have been indexed by the search engines. What do you do next to get to the top of the list? There are two solutions, one organic and one not.

Back Links

Back links are the organic solution. Of all the variables in the programs used to calculate who should be listed first, the most reliable one that can be leveraged has to do with people telling the search engines you are an expert on what you do. This happens by them linking to you, hopefully with a phrase you want to be found under.

You can find out how many sites link to your site by going to Google and typing in “links:” followed by your complete web address. If there are no listings, then you need to get the word out. The fastest way to get the word out is having unique content that others need. Having short articles that answer questions or provide insight and interest is the fastest route, but how do you let people know you have this data? Browse through social websites, forums, blogs, or news sites relevant to your products and industry. Find people asking questions and answer those questions. Provide a link on the other site to yours with more answers if they desire.

Do not just post a link to your site. The search engines and community around that site will view it as spam. Try to use a user name that is not related to your site and make it sound like you have nothing to do with your site. Otherwise the community will view it as spam. The more sites of importance you have linking to you the faster you will raise in the search engine results.

Do not pay for, ask for, or participate in any scenario that has someone else’s site linking to yours in return for a link to theirs. This is called link farming and will get you black-listed from the search engines. Once black-listed you can never get re-listed with that URL again.

Sponsored Links

Sponsored links are those links you see on the right hand side of the search engine results. These are paid for links and only 10% of all searchers click on these. Before delving into sponsored links, we recommend giving our techniques for building back-links at least 6 months to take effect. While viral marketing happens overnight, getting the right marketing takes time.

If you have decided to do sponsored links you will need to set up an account with the search engine of your choice. Google has the largest search volume, plus their Adsense program is an easy way for website owners to place ads on their site in order to generate revenue. Given this coverage and that Google is a well known brand name; they are a good place to start. You can sign up for an account here: https://adwords.google.com/select/Login.

Upon signing up you will need to do the following:

• Set a budget
• Pick your search terms
• Write your ads
• Set your bids for each search term

The way you get to the top of the sponsored listings is to be willing to pay the most for that particular search term. If you want to be found anytime anyone enters the word “lawnmower”, you will have to outbid the others seeking that word. This could mean you only need to spend $0.05 or you could end up spending a couple of dollars. The advertising program you choose will show you high bids. Your bid is what you could pay on a per click basis.

If we are searching and see your ad for lawnmowers that you paid $1 for, when I click on it, you owe Google $1 even if we don’t buy a thing. Now the bidding process isn’t quite so cut and dry. If you are willing to pay $1, but the next highest bidder is only wiling to pay $0.50, when we click on your ad, you will only owe $0.51 to Google. You will need to monitor your account daily to make sure you ads are working and that you are happy with your budget.