The Top 5 Roadblocks To Web Accessibility

Introduction
Accessibility is often the last thing on a web designer's mind when creating a website. This is not a trait unique to newbies or people working on a personal page. It is also a trait common to professional web designers (large and small) and even multinational corporations. In fact, most web designers have no clue about what accessibility is.
Many who do know what accessibility is will often treat it as though it is brain surgery. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, all that it takes to create an accessible site is some forethought and understanding of the kinds of mistakes you're likely to make so you know how to avoid them.
What is Accessibility?
For those with no knowledge of accessibility, I usually like to use the following analogy: The building you work in probably has at least one handicapped parking space. If it has more than one floor, it probably has an elevator or escalator (or both). It has railings on the stairs, and probably has a dip in the curb. Your workplace has these items in order to facilitate access to the business by disabled customers and/or employees. Accessible web design is nothing more than an electronic equivalent of this effort toward equal access to your resources.
The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect - Tim Berners Lee, inventor of HTML and the HTTP protocol.
Why A Complete Focus is Needed
I will not venture into any discussion of the morality of why you should make your site accessible. Simply put, any argument (other than sheer ignorance) against accessible design is simply not worth having. Instead, let's focus on what sorts of special needs a user may have that can create problems in interacting with a website:
Visual impairments, which can manifest themselves in color blindness, poor eyesight or complete blindness
Hearing impairments in a wide range of potential severities
Mobility impairments ranging from arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, paralysis, or other motor-control disorders
Cognitive impairments such as cerebral palsy, Downs syndrome, Alzheimer's, dyslexia, or learning disorders
Seizure disorders like epilepsy
Ultimately, a complete approach is what is needed in order to create an accessible site. You cannot predict the user's needs or the severity of those needs. Misguided approaches such as browser detection or text-only alternatives betray a lack of understanding this fact. Text-only alternatives can only provide an accessibility solution for those with vision disorders, thereby disregarding millions of other disabled users with different needs. Browser detection is destined to fail, as disabled visitors use a wide range of adaptive technology, including user-agents that identify themselves as one of the major brands. Moreover, there is no way to detect the user's pointing device or any of the other items in the wide range of settings used to compensate for their special needs.
Avoid The Most Common Mistakes
In their ignorance and disregard, web designers are most likely to commit five mistakes that are roadblocks to accessibility. Avoiding these mistakes will take you far down the road toward accessible design. Your site won't be perfect just by avoiding these five mistakes, but committing these mistakes will likely mean the site is completely unusable a wide range of users with special needs.
1. Dependence upon client side scripting to present navigation or important content
Among the ways you can make a website completely inaccessible to many types of impairments at once is to use client-side scripting in such a way that the entire site fails to work for users who have client side scripting turned off or who are using adaptive technology that does not recognize client side scripting at all.
Such items would be things like:
Event handled dynamic content (processed client side)
Fly-Out (aka DHTML) menus
Drop down menus that require the onChange event handler to operate
Popup windows that do not work without JavaScript
Reliance on scripting will have one of four possible results:
The site will load but navigation will be impossible (it will either display and not work, or often just not display)
Substantial portions of content will not display
The site will load but absolutely no content will display
In an attempt to circumvent "usability" problems created by their use of scripting, they will cluelessly detect the presence of scripting support by the browser and redirect the user to a dead end page, which attempts to teach you how to upgrade your software.
I consider any of these results to be a complete accessibility failure. Unfortunately, even websites for multinational corporations and government entities fail under such criterion.
The following sites lead to dead end pages asking you to upgrade your software
New York Stock Exchange
Time Magazine
H&R Block
Travelocity
General Motors
Toyota
Porsche
The following sites result in completely inoperable navigational elements
Washington DC Water and Sewer Authority
Volvo
1-800-Contacts
The American Automobile Association
Verisign
The following sites will load, but the content will actually not display at all
Chrysler
Ford
Chevy
Visa
The following sites have a Swiss-cheese effect with content sporadically missing on screen
Dodge
Jeep
Baltimore Ravens Football Team
The solution for these problems is extremely simple. Do not make anything completely dependent upon scripting. Interactive elements should add to the enjoyment of the website, not detract from it as often happens.
I recommend against using "fly-out" (aka DHTML) menus and dropdown menus for primary navigation.
While it is possible to create them so that navigation works with scripting turned off, that will only solve one set of problems. As a general usability issue, DHTML navigation is often described as "slippery" by able-bodied users, and can certainly create frustration among those with motor impairments.
At the very least, you'll want to ensure two things when using fly-out menus for navigation:
The menu (or a

, , , , ,
Deprecated attributes include align (in many cases), alink, background, bgcolor, height and width (for table cells), hspace, vspace, and many more
Improper use of elements to dictate presentation would include use of tables for layout, use of in layout tables, using

 or 
 to control text positioning, or not associating data table cells with headers and defining relationships between headers and data rows/ columns.
CSS is for presentation
In every case where presentational effect is needed, you should use CSS to achieve the presentational effect. I cannot think of many presentational effects achieved by HTML attributes that do not have CSS equivalents. Some CSS properties have spotty support by major browsers, and for this reason you should always keep this issue in mind. This spotty support does not mean you should lazily resort to HTML's presentational attributes. Rather, it means you should either come to grips with the myth of "looking the same" to everyone or find another presentational effect to chase after. In my opinion, resorting to a workaround means the design is flawed, not the spec.
Use appropriate markup
Use appropriate markup for the document, before even involving yourself in presentation. This includes things like headings, paragraph tags, and break tags. Are you using 
 to make a large, bold word? Are you using  to create a heading? Are you using 
 to create a break between paragraphs? Are you using 
 to indent text? If so, you're using these elements improperly.
Each of these elements has a purpose in dictating the structure of the document. For instance, 
 is the element meant to dictate the heading of the document. 
 is for sub-headings, such as main sections of text. 
 is meant as a subheading of a section. 
 is meant to mark a paragraph, and so on. For more information on what the purpose is of the various HTML elements, visit the spec yourself. http://www.w3.org/TR/html401
To ensure greater accessibility:
Use HTML to define structure only
Use CSS to define presentation
Always use the most appropriate element for the content. Do not misuse elements or attributes just to achieve your aesthetic vision.
3. Device dependence
While many people tend to think of accessibility as efforts to make a site usable for the blind, this is simply not true. Creating a site that is dependent upon any piece of hardware is destined to fail for users with a wide range of potential special needs - most notably, the blind and persons with motor impairments. Device dependence is a bad practice from a general usability standpoint as well. More and more users are accessing the Internet with devices such as cell phones and PDAs. Creating device dependence can serve to alienate far more people, disabled or not.
Device dependence can be seen as:
onClick/ onMouseover/ onMouseout or other event handlers that rely on the user having a mouse in order to operate a link or form control.
Server-side image maps that do not have a corresponding set of redundant links
Navigation or forms that do not have a logical tab order
I don't necessarily frown on device dependence in cases where the dependence is only an issue for things like rollovers, image highlighting, text color changing, or some other decorative change. The issue comes when the device dependence combines with a reliance on scripting (#1, above) in that the event handler is tied to something like form submission, content presentation, or a calculation. In such cases, as I also said above, these things would probably be best-handled server-side. At the same time, a more accessible event handler choice might be best as well, using handlers like onFocus, onBlur, onChange and onSelect.
In cases where device-dependent event handlers are needed, you should use redundancy to handle the interaction so that it at least works for people using either a mouse or a keyboard. When you use onMousedown, combine it with onKeydown. When you use onClick, combine it with onKeypress: 
Example:
Click The Button
Ultimately, you would still be far from fully accessible, so long as there's any level of device dependence for access to any important content, navigation, or interactivity. A far better approach would be to refrain from creating site features that require the user having any specific piece of hardware. Remember one thing above all others: For every specific special need there is just as wide of a variety of methods used by the visitor to compensate for it. This includes input devices just as much as it does output devices. Dodge the bullet altogether by creating the site so that it doesn't matter what the visitor uses to interact with the site.
Some creative and knowledgeable designers also use JavaScript's document.write() function to write these features to the browser. In these cases, they also wisely provide a redundant text alternative via the 
 tag.
Then use a "legend" for each field set using the 
 tag and provide a  for each element.
What Operating System Do You Like Best?
 Windows Macintosh Linux Unix 
Example:
What Operating System Do You Like Best?
Windows
Macintosh
Linux
Unix
For select menus, use the  element to group related choices. Again, explicitly defining the label. What kind of dog do you have
  German Shorthaired Pointer Chesapeake Bay Retriever Golden Retriever Labrador Retriever Cocker Spaniel   Boxer Bullmastiff Mastiff Rottweiler Saint Bernard   Boston Terrier Bulldog  Dalmatian French Bulldog  Poodle   
Example:
What kind of dog do you have:
German Shorthaired Pointer
Chesapeake Bay Retriever
Golden Retriever
Labrador Retriever
Cocker Spaniel
Boxer
Bullmastiff
Mastiff
Rottweiler
Saint Bernard
Boston Terrier
Bulldog
Dalmatian
French Bulldog
Poodle
Always provide a button to submit forms.
Don't use JavaScript to automatically submit forms via an onChange event unless you also provide a functioning button so that those without JavaScript can submit the form as well.
Ultimately, it is the information that matters
What it all boils down to is ability to access information. Accessibility is not "in addition to" what you already have, and it should not take away from it either. A complete focus on the user (all users) stems only from an understanding of why people are coming to your website: Information. Accessibility is the effort toward providing equal access to the information to all - regardless of the methods they use to access it. It requires nothing more than an understanding of the potential roadblocks and how they can be avoided.

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Honest **FREE** Reviews of Internet Businesses - Scams or NOT

If you are anything like me - and the other bazillion people in the world that want to make some extra money - potentially MILLIONS on the internet, then perhaps you TOO have already spent too much on trying. I know I have.

I am sick of spending my hard earned money on empty promises. I can not begin to tell you how many different programs I have bought, read and followed to a -T-, with ZERO return for my money. But, here I am now, writing articles on the internet, and YOU are reading this.

I have reviewed several different opportunities and have a web-site that you can view to get an HONEST and **FREE** opinion of several that I have found to be profitable. REAL money makers that you TOO can make money on.

I (personally) am not "selling" anything. Although, I do offer you direct links to get to the opportunities. PLEASE read the reviews first, then you decide. There is a lot of information out there, I know. But, ask yourself, "Self, how did she get me here to read this?"

You can find the answer for **FREE** at:

www.toolsformoremoney.com

Have a prosperous day!!

......Kristin Griffin

About The Author

Kristin Griffin is an up and coming Internet Marketer. She has tried and tested many different online business opportunities and resources and has decided to post reviews on the programs that she has earned success from.

www.toolsformoremoney.com

Contact: info@toolsformoremoney.com

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Link Directory Tools

Maintaining link directory is one of the best ways to get the targeted internet traffic on your website. You can have reciprocal as well as out-going links with the help of various other web masters on your link directory. Though setting up of a link directory involves the usage of a number of link directory tools by you.

Yes, you have to adopt certain link directory tools to sustain in this competitive cyber world. Also, it is of utmost importance for you to get your links positioned at the right place on the web. For, the performance of your links largely depends on the positioning of your links. If you are not linked with the right websites at the right place, your whole link building campaign can fail at once. This would be because the search engines would fail to locate you for the search results. And this will result in a total chaos and no page ranking for you. Certainly you would not like to fall in such a situation at all.

So you can definitely adopt a few popular tools and software to maintain an effective link directory for you.

First things first, all your link building campaign is based on the single fact that you want a right position among the major search engines’ results. And this is probably the biggest concern and worry for all the webmasters. Even your competitor would be thinking night and day for raising their page ranks above you, by using even better link popularity techniques. So you should also join the bandwagon and adopt the right tools for maintaining an effective link directory today.

Now to raise your link popularity by increasing the quality links in your link directory, you can purchase some link directory software. The software would automate your functions of finding and linking with the right links for your link directory. In fact the software would not only manage your directory but would also provide you with good sources of links.

The software also supports a few predefined categories that would save your considerable time for developing links as well. The link directory tools and software also enable you to customize the categories according to your needs and design them as you like. Also you can conveniently get rid of the useless categories via them.

Some other link directory tools in the market also provide you with the great choices of templates and designs for making apt link directory. You can choose the color of the template for each category of links. Also you can give various colors to different links in the directory. The most popular colors are red, blue and green.

The link directory tools are a great way to establish excellent link directory. The software is available in different scripts. Most popular of them is the PHP script link directory tool. PHP is a scripting language that makes the installation of a link directory easy as PHP script software can be installed on every operating system.

Other scripts like java and CGI are also used in the industry, but they are reported to have some complications while setting up a link directory. These link directory tools are easy to avail. You can get them easily from the software stores and on the internet.

Now follow some tips as well. You must link with the big webmasters such as Yahoo, Msn or Amazon to reap the benefits of the internet in the most fruitful manner. Always choose the right names for the categories in your link directory. The categories must be strictly named after the links in that particular category.

The whole purpose of a link directory is to provide the links in a systematic manner. So you must always mention the links in the directory in a systematic manner.

So what are you waiting for? Using this useful information on link directory tools and software, you can definitely become the cyber King. All the best!

About The Author

Henry James

Discover advanced link building and link popularity tools and resources as a Member of: http://www.Link-Advantage.com

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Link Popularity - Your Key to a Page #1 Listing

Last week I was doing a search in Google under 'ezine advertising' and was amazed to find one of my own websites on the first page of results (position #4 out of 271,000).

So then I went to Yahoo and got another shock - there it was again at position #4 out of 274,000 results.

If you're wondering how I did it, the answer is I'm not entirely sure.

But my guess is *link popularity*.

What is link popularity?

Some years ago the major search engines realized that the best way to decide if your website has valuable content (and is therefore worth a high ranking) is to see how many other websites link to your site.

Link popularity was pioneered by Google but has now become a key factor in the algorithms used by most of the major search engines.

Would you like to know your current link popularity?

Here's a free tool that will check your link popularity in Alltheweb, AltaVista, AOL, Google, HotBot and MSN. This tool will also compare your link popularity with your competitors': http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/

Now that you know your link popularity, you may be wondering how you can increase it.

Here are some commonly used strategies - some effective and some not:

==> FFA Sites

Free For All sites are websites that collect your email address (and send you a lot of junk email) and in return allow you to post a link on a website.

FFA sites are rather like a conveyor belt - new links are constantly being added and old links being pushed off. On Many FFA sites your link will last an hour or two at the most.

Even if your link stayed on an FFA site long enough to be indexed by a search engine, it is unlikely it would increase your link popularity. Search engines regard FFA sites as spam and they'll either ignore your link or penalize your site.

==> Link Exchange Programs

As with FFA sites, you need to ask yourself the same question the search engines ask.

Did someone link to your site because you have valuable content? Or did they link to your site as part of a mutual ploy to artificially raise each other's link popularity?

The search engines know how to tell the difference and some of them (Google for example) will actually ban your site for engaging in 'link farming'.

Another problem with this method is *link relevancy*. If the sites linking to you have content that is not related to your content, the search engines will not give much weight to those links.

==> Reciprocal Links with Individual Webmasters

This will definitely increase your link popularity, especially if you seek out link partners whose websites share the same theme as yours.

But this approach is time consuming - first you have to surf around looking for potential link partners, then you have to email them, then you have to confirm that they added your link and so on.

==> Writing Articles

This is the technique I use for increasing link popularity and it works very well.

Write short articles of 300 - 800 words and then submit them to the article announcement lists and the online article banks.

There are thousands of webmasters out there who need free content for their websites and you'll soon find your articles appearing on dozens, even hundreds, of different websites.

At the bottom of your article is your Resource Box containing a link to your website. It might look something like this:

---

John Doe is the webmaster of yourdomain.com where he
offers cutting-edge tips on all aspects of web marketing.
To find more advice, tools and resources to help you
succeed in online business, visit: http://www.yourdomain.com

---

Most webmasters will make the URL in your Resource Box an active link. If they don't, you should insist on it because it's part of the deal - they get free content for their website and you get a free link.

This technique has two important advantages over other methods of raising link popularity:

1. You don't have to clutter up your website with reciprocal links
2. You don't have to invest huge amounts of time searching for link partners and then emailing them to request a link. If they like your article, they just add it to their website.

Happy writing!

(c) 2002 by Michael Southon

About The Author

Michael Southon has been writing for the internet for over 3 years. He has shown hundreds of webmasters how to dramatically increase traffic and sales. You can read more articles like this by joining his EPT Newsletter (FREE 3 Day Mini-Course when you join): ept-subscribe@aweber.com

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Contest Advice for Screenplay Writers

Introduction

There are many screenplay contests available to the aspiring screenwriter. These contests can be a good avenue to getting one's work noticed and/or make a sale. So, it's important to make certain that you have written your screenplay to the best of your ability and according to industry standards.

The most important thing to do for any aspiring screenwriter is to first learn the basic techniques of screenwriting before sitting down to write one. I come across many hopeful writers who think that all it takes to write a script is a good story idea and a lot of explosive special effects. While a good story is important, with or without the special effects, writing that story using proper industry standards is equally important. (Please visit http://www.coverscript.com/education.html -- Tips for Screenwriters link for further information.)

There are specific techniques to the craft of screenwriting involving everything from act structure to proper screenplay format, which must be followed. It's difficult to write engaging characters, focused plots and entertaining screenplays without having a solid framework in which to bring it all to life.

Before any money is spent submitting your work to a screenwriting contest, it would behoove the writer to first educate himself in the "tools of the trade". There are many, many screenwriting books available as well as workshops and seminars, both online and in live classroom situations. My advice is to take advantage of them. Then, armed with the basics, write, write and then write some more.

Then before submitting your work to any screenplay competition have it copyrighted and WGA registered. (United States Copyright office: http://www.loc.gov/copyright. Writers Guild of America: http://www.wga.org/.)

Advice and Suggestions

I am a judge for many contests and as such, have read thousands of TV scripts and screenplays. I can assure you that the winners are chosen because their screenplays or TV scripts contain great stories and are written to industry standards. Therefore, putting your best foot forward is a must. Below are some pointers to keep in mind before you submit your screenplay.


If your purpose is to "break into the business", make certain that the script contest you enter offers meetings with agents and/or producers as part of the prize for winning and not just cash prizes. Of course, if it is just the extra cash you're after, then go for it!

Make certain, before you write that entry fee check and send in your material, that the screenplay contest or TV script competition is a reputable one and indeed has, in the past, delivered to its winners what it promised in its promotion.

Presentation of your screenplay does count so make certain your screenplay follows the accepted industry standards. This not only includes using the proper screenplay format but also such things as a typo-free screenplay and the correct binding.

Keep in mind that the industry professionals who sponsor some of these film and TV competitions do so in order to find good producible material, hopefully for lower rather than higher budgets. Therefore, entering a screenplay in a genre with a story that screams "high budget" lessens the writer's chances of winning. This means that
Sci-fi special effects stories taking place on purple planets populated with giant, paisley-skinned, seven-armed, Plasmanian Wooglegorps who magically float through the air using anti-gravity belts or
a 1920's Period Piece necessitating Model-T's, Zoot suits and flappers or
an action/adventure story that has the bad guys blown to smithereens, along with their Lear jet, over the ocean, followed by a high-tech nuclear submarine underwater search and rescue mission while the oil slicked water burns out of control, may not be the best way to go.

Make certain that your story is told visually. Film is a visual medium.

Make sure you don't have "on the nose" dialogue or too much dialogue and that all the dialogue sounds natural.

Check to make sure that your characters are interesting, engaging and have good character arcs. Nothing worse than having an unlikable hero, a wishy-washy bad guy, or a protagonist who starts out angry at the world and by the end of the story is still angry at the world having learned and changed nothing in his nature.
Conclusion

Once you've gone through your screenplay and are satisfied with it, have it read by someone else. After all, your story is intended for a movie-going audience so honest opinions from friends and family members will give you a feel for that audience reaction.

Then do yourself a favor and have your screenplay read by an industry professional that has experience and good credentials in the area of script analysis. A writer can become too close to his work and not be able to "see the forest for the trees". It is to your advantage to have any possible format, story, character, dialogue and structure flaws found and corrected before it is submitted to a movie or TV script contest.

While there is never any guarantee your screenplay or TV script will be a winner, writing one to the best of your ability and which meets industry standards is a must, as the competition is fierce.

I wish you great success in your present and future story-telling adventures.

Lynne Pembroke
Coverscript.com
URL: http://www.coverscript.com/

About The Author


Copyright © 2004 Lynne Pembroke, Coverscript.com

We will be pleased to have the above article published but first, please contact pemburger@aol.com informing where this article will be published.

Lynne Pembroke is a writer, poet, screenwriter and owner of Coverscript.com, with over 18 years of experience in screenwriting and screenplay analysis helping individual writers, screenwriting competitions, agents, studios, producers and script consulting companies. Services include screenplay, TV script and treatment analysis, ghostwriting, rewriting and adaptation of novel to screenplay. Visit http://www.coverscript.com/ for more details.

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Search Engines And Directories - Understanding The Difference

One thing that is so basic that it often still needs to clarified is the concept that a search engine and a search directory (article directory) are not the same thing. The traditional search engines add Web site pages to their databases automatically and then rank them in popularity in their search engine rankings based on user submissions. However, these search engines also periodically send their automatic robots or "spiders" out to "crawl" for new and updated information on websites that can also be indexed and added to the search engine rankings. Complex algorithms (that are comparable to the mysterious complex FICO Scores that are used to calculate your credit rating) calculate your web page’s popularity on a number of different factor. The most famous example of a pure search engine like this is Google

Directories also qualify as a search site but they are not the same as a search engine. To get listed on a directory, you must actually submit your front page URL on the directory's submission form. Also instead of being evaluated by an algorithm, these pages are directly assessed by a human being. This means that your site is ranked according to the information that you submitted on your application. This is very different from a typical search engine that assesses your web ranking according to what is actually on the home page of your web site. The Open Directory, Yahoo and LookSmart are the main Internet directories that are managed in this way.

To make things even more difficult the search sites and the search engines work in cahoots together to boost each other’s rankings. Almost all of the major search engines also work in tandem with a directory which is why, for instance, a listing in DMOZ almost automatically guarantees you a place on Google.


About The Author

Chris Angus is a website promoter and SEO - He helps promote the following pages: http://www.148directory.com/rss.php?c=122&s=P&p=1
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Blogsrecord.com - Submit your blog for free and join the contest now!

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