Building Accessible Websites (Book Review)
Having read Building Accessible Websites by Joe Clark in the past it was more a book re-review, but plainly this is an industry staple for any designer or developer out there who wants to build the best product possible. It could have just as easily been named Building Quality Websites or How Not to Push a Crap Web Interface at the Unsuspecting Public. I’m sure he considered similar titles.
My interest in reading Building Accessible Websites this time pertained to the current transition from WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 1.0 toward WCAG 2.0 Candidate Recommendation. Which means I’m coming to terms with each WCAG and how I’m going to deal with particular issues in my work, not only with regards to using (X)HTML and other W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) web standards but my overall approach towards multimedia. I think its by taking the best of Joe’s advice and WCAG 1.0, and by melding it towards our interpretation and acceptance of WCAG 2.0, that I’m going to find a path of best practice. Real world accessibility is as much about a philosophy of approach as it is about the methodology of deployment.
Building Accessible Websites is an old book and it is aimed directly at WCAG 1.0, which is a good thing. WCAG 1.0 was about stating that problem X should be solved with solution Y - this book is full of those solutions. If you want to write quality (X)HTML tables to represent your tabular data, if you want accessible forms or need to understand the issues involved in providing alternate content to various audiences with numerous disabilities - this is a great book even today. In fact, I’d be the first person to read it again if it were updated with current statistics that reflect the contemporary 2008 software environment with all we’ve learned about various screen reader nuances, and so forth. With a bit of luck that may just come about (touch wood).
This book resolved, in my head, that the WCAG 2.0 Candidate Recommendation will work very well alongside the current (X)HTML guidance provided by the earlier WCAG 1.0. The fundamentals of HTML, at least to versions prior to HTML 5, will not have significantly changed to alter the best practice advice. Of course, WCAG 1.0 won’t be a finger worth waving into anyone’s face anymore but let’s face it that document was significantly outdated anyway. I just wouldn’t dismiss most of those guidelines out of hand. Most of what Joe Clark says in Building Accessible Websites stands today, which is actually (in the world of technology books) amazing enough. I’d also recommend readers not to avoid the book’s Appendix on the Law.
I’d still recommend anyone who really wanted to understand accessibility, or who really just wanted to know the difference between a good web solution and a crap one, to read this particular book. Yes I know there are newer shinier more relevant books out there but I’ve always liked this one (if only it were updated). Perhaps a second edition would be a far bigger economic success than the earlier version - many more people would buy the current book. There is also a far greater likelihood that the second edition would be adopted as a higher education text book by more contemporary thinking professors and educators - computer science, human computer interaction, interface design and usability courses.
And, I should note, that Joe was very progressive as an online businessman - how long has the free copy been available? Many years. And that, it seems, is something mainstream publishers are only just coming to terms with today.
