How to write a useful accessibility statement

Many sites, including this one, have an accessibility statement that explains to visitors what has been done to increase accessibility for people with disabilities. A guess is that many of us have adapted Mark Pilgrim’s Accessibility statement for diveintomark.org and left it at that without thinking of ways to make it even better.

Gez Lemon has written a good reminder of the importance of Writing a Good Accessibility Statement. That is, to really think about how it will be used by the people who need it, and to make the information in the accessibility statement less technical and more focused on what the visitors’ needs.

Gez suggests dividing the accessibility statement into three sections: the actual statement, a list of accessibility features and how they can be used, and any remaining accessibility barriers that you are aware of.

Good one, Gez. Now I’ve got to take a look at improving the accessibility statement for this site.

Posted on December 16, 2005 in Accessibility, Quicklinks

Comments

  1. December 16, 2005 by Small Paul

    Cool It’ll be nice to see what you come up with. I think that accessibility is improved when more people do the same stuff, so that users expectations are set and everything’s thus more usable (like everyone using the same access keys, as Richard Rutter suggested over at Clagnut a couple of years back).

    We’ll be watching, Roger :)

  2. December 16, 2005 by Aaron Simonds

    Thanks for the heads up Rodger. I have been trying to track down some practical information on practical accessibility and privacy (P3P) guidelines.

    On a side note, since this is probally my last post this year I just wanted to say thanks for the work you have done here to help educate those of us new to the web standards world. It is appreciated…

    God Julafton och God Nyårsdagen

  3. December 16, 2005 by Roger Johansson (Author comment)

    Small Paul: It’s on my to-do list, but it’s a pretty long list right now so I’m not sure when I’ll get to it. Hopefully in the next few weeks.

    Aaron: I’m happy to help, and thanks for reading!

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