After a lot of thought, I've switched this site over to Drupal. I really like WordPress, and I plan to continue designing for it, but for my purposes Drupal will be a better fit. While I could have matched the new site structure to the old one, I decided to restructure. My old site map had become a little conveluted and I took this opportunity to straighten it out. I'm using PathRedirect to ease the transition, and PathAuto make the new sitemap easier the maintain.

For  those who might be interested, here's a few more details of revised site:

• This site theme is built on the Zen theme using sub-themes.
• I'm using Mollom for spam control
• I've continued to use Google Analytics
• I've used a dev version of LinkToContent to make in-site linking easier.

W3C has a new accessibility section. It does a nice job of unifying their accessibility content into one location. The home page has a great explanation of the three W's of accessibility. Why, What, and How. (Two W's and an H just doesn't have a nice ring to it.)

"The Web is fundamentally designed to work for all people, whatever their hardware, software, language, culture, location, or physical or mental ability. When the Web meets this goal, it is accessible to people with a diverse range of hearing, movement, sight, and cognitive ability." - Accessibility - W3C

Relaunched Recovery.gov Fails Accessibility Standards

"It is unfortunate that recovery.gov, in its technical implementation, fails to meet long-standing, widely understood accessibility requirements."

I didn't think much of the previous version of recovery.gov, and it looks like I likely won't like the new version either. They're quite pretty, but poorly handled data tables and image maps really doesn't sound promising for accessibility.

Interested in testing the accessibility of your site? Here's a couple of free online tools that will get you started.

• Total Validator Service - Tests Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1 (1-3), WCAG2 (A-AAA), and Section 508
• EvalAccess - Tests WCAG1 (1-3)
• Section 508 web accessibility checker - As the name would suggest, tests Section 508
• Cynthia Says - Tests Section 508, and WCAG1 (1-3)

You might also try the Firefox Accessibility Extension by the Illinois Center for Information Technology Accessibility, or the Web Accessibility Toolbar by Vision Australia.

Webaim has a round up of accessibility blogs. Got take a look at the Accessibility Blog Roundup.

To say that people are starting to talk about accessibility on the web would be misleading. Some people have been talking about it for quite a while. What should be said is that people are starting to listen to talk about accessibility.  If you're interested in learning about accessibility, here are some people and organization you should try listening to.

• 456 Berea Street
• Accessibility Field Notes
• Accessites.org
• AlastairC
• Bruce Lawson's personal site
• Confusability
• Do It Myself Blog - Glenda Watson Hyatt
• Human Factors International, Inc.
• Jim Thatcher
• Joe Dolson Accessible Web Design
• Juicy Studio
• lifekludger
• mezzoblue
• Usability is No Longer Enough
• Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Highlights
• Web Axe - Practical Web Design Accessibility Tips
• What's New at Usability.gov
• and Thoughts on Design - because it's my list

Writing Project: 25 Words of Social Media Wisdom - Liz Strauss

Accessible Social Media can give everyone an equal voice. It can enhance people's ability to communicate at their own time, and on their own terms.

h/t Glenda Watson Hyatt

I recently found one of the best descriptions of what accessibility is I've ever read. I haven't had a chance to track down the book yet, but if this chapter is an example, it's a must have for anyone in web design.

Web accessibility is about removing those barriers so that people with disabilities can use and contribute to the Web. - Understanding Web Accessibility

Go read the whole chapter, it's well worth your time.

You might expect a high level of accessibility from a site called Usability.gov.  You might be disappointed. Sadly, I wasn't particularly surprised by my quick look into the accessibility of this site.

Age is definitely a factor. While the copyright is up to date, the fact that has custom style sheets for Internet Explorer (IE) 5 and newer, and 4.7 and older makes me think it's not a new design. With that code, I'd hope it was more than five years old. Regardless, it's showing its age.

Some of the low points of the site are:

• Absolutely horrible use of headings for structure.
• Use of images of text rather than text.
• Bad use of the hover pseudo-class making navigation awkward
• No use of the focus pseudo-class making  keyboard navigation all but impossible
• An unreasonable number of validation errors and warnings
• Invisible skip links, which don't work in IE.

This is one of those sites that seems to pass most cursory accessibility tests without actually being accessible. It follows the letter of Section 508 compliance, while throwing the spirit of the law out the window. That it does have skip links, but you can't see them and they don't work is a perfect example of this. It has the appearance of accessibility, without actual the benefit of accessibility.

A friend recently asked me about the accessibility of a new US government website he'd seen. He knew I'd been following the various discussions about federal government accessibility. Like others I've looked at, IT Dashboard doesn't do very well.

At first glance, you might think it was going to be accessible. Nice clean layout in a modern style... it should be accessible too, right? You might think that, but you'd be disappointed. Let's take it from the top.

• First thing I noticed while testing is that it seems to be forcing compatibility mode in Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) As of this posting it's not yet on the IE8 Compatibility View Blacklist
• Skip links: present, but invisible and don't work for me in Internet Explorer 8. (compatibility mode?)
• Text resizing: Nice clean text resizing links at the top of the page, but they don't seem to work in Internet Explorer or Firefox. I can see a refreshing of the screen, but I can't see any text changing.
• Page headings: Should have at least one H1 heading. It has none. The home page has one H2 heading.
• Default language: not defined
• Alternative text: Purely decorative images are given alt text, they should be put in the CSS.
• OnClick handler does not have focus-able element
• Color contrast: with a 4.5:1 ratio being a minimum value for AA rating this site has links with a 2.35:1 ratio. Unacceptable.
• Screen refreshing: There is no means that I can see to stop the screen from refreshing whenever the home page graphs reload. While this isn't particularly noticeable in normal browser viewing, my testing software resets about every thirty seconds. I have to think that accessibility software and add-ons would do the same.

While this is by no means a complete evaluation, it does show an alarming number of problems, some of them quite serious. My final problem with this site is the accessibility page. In my opinion this is the place where you explain how to use the accessibility features of a website. This is not the place to make political statements. This site's page begins with:

The Obama Administration has a comprehensive agenda to empower individuals with disabilities in order to equalize opportunities for all Americans.

It's only in the eighth paragraph that actual web accessibility features are mentioned. These three sentences are two little, and they are seven paragraphs too late. This is as good a summation of my opinion of the site as I could write.