Bloggers Unite for People with Disabilities: Accessible Blogs

Well, I didn't make the 7/24/2010 deadline for this round of Bloggers Unite; I was going to find out how to make my blogs accessible to all. Silly me, I though this would be a no-big-deal kind of thing to do. Wrong.

I should really learn to research these things BEFORE I make commitments about doing them. I'm living and learning, and although I'm late for the event, I wanted to at least report back what I found out.

First I went to WAVE, a Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool that I found on the Blogger's Unite for People with Disabilities page, and plugged my blog's address in. That told me everything that was wrong with my blog regarding accessibility. And that's all. No clue as to how to fix it. Or if there are any clues, I'm too clueless to pick up on them.

So I went back to the Bloggers Unite for People with Disabilities page and put in this comment:

sherrillynn

Any hints on how to make a site/blog 100% accessible?

16 days ago
by: sherrillynn
I'm going to try to make my blog (theiciexperience.blogspot.com) 100% accessible for the People First event. I have no idea how to do it and the Wave site that tells me some things about what's wrong with my blog (wave.webaim.org/) has no clues about what to do to fix it. I'm going to research this, but any helpful hints would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

 I was pleased when the good folks at BlogCatalog responded within a couple of days:


14 days ago BlogCatalog wrote:

I am sure we can help you. Let me contact some people I know that I think will have some info for you and I'll post here when I get some replies.

A few days before the event deadline this comment was posted:


BlogCatalog

Questions about web accessibility

8 days ago
by: BlogCatalog
A few people have asked if there are resources that explain to bloggers how to fix problems a site evaluator may point out to them about their site. I asked blogger @GlendaWH if she had any suggestions and she responded:


Two great resources for web accessibility are the Web Accessibility Initiative - www.w3.org/WAI/, and WebAIM - www.webaim.org/.

However, I am finding that blog accessibility is different than web accessibility, even though the underlying principles are the same. Instead of a web team working together, with blogs, there's the platform, the theme, the plugins/widgets and the blogger. The average blogger can do only so much in terms of accessibility.

Hope this helps those of you who had questions and thanks Glenda for sharing your knowledge with me and the rest of the event.

So.  For now, no accessibility for those of us with blogs using existing platforms (Blogger, WordPress, etc.) But I feel like progress has definitely been made in that this information is out there now for others to find.

It seems to me that the next thing to do is to make our desire to have accessible blogs clear to the platform providers.  Are ya hearing' me, Blogger?


Comments

  1. JulyJeanieJuly 29, 2010 at 8:19 PM

    Hey Sherril,

    Don't feel bad, you're not in a minority here. I missed the deadline too, lol.....for the same reasons! Just wanted to let you know you're not alone in this. (Winks)

    Have you heard any answers besides the above yet?

    ReplyDelete
  2. DotJuly 30, 2010 at 10:05 PM

    Thanks for this post - I've been trying to make Fibro World as accessible as possible and really admire what you're doing. I go through long periods of time when I can't even look at a computer screen because of eye/migraine issues.

    I didn't know anything about Wave until I read your post and I'm going to try out the evaluation.

    ReplyDelete
  3. SherrilAugust 3, 2010 at 4:58 PM

    Thanks, Dot! I really hope Wave helps you.

    ReplyDelete
  4. SherrilAugust 3, 2010 at 5:18 PM

    Thanks to you too, JJ!

    I haven't heard anything more from anyone. I expect it will be a process, reworking the whole internet to be accessible for all. Seems like they should have built it that way in the first place, but it might take some laws at this point to force big guys like Blogger to go back and fix things. We shall see.

    ReplyDelete
  5. SadiaAugust 4, 2010 at 1:26 PM

    Sherril, I wrote about the same subject. It's nice to know I'm not the only blogger out there frustrated by this.

    ReplyDelete
  6. SherrilAugust 4, 2010 at 9:01 PM

    Sadia, great post! You obviously have a lot more clues than I do. I will bookmark and study your post so that I can absorb it over time. I pick up clues better that way... ;-)

    ReplyDelete

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