Joseph C. Dolson

Articles by: Joseph C. Dolson

Joseph C. Dolson

Joseph C. Dolson is a WordPress plugin developer and accessibility consultant. He's the author of several popular WordPress plugins, including WP to Twitter and My Calendar, and works to promote accessible development with WordPress. He teaches a course at Lynda.com on Accessibility for WordPress and works with the WordPress Accessibility team to help make WordPress and WordPress.org resources more accessible.

Joe has been working in marketing and web development since 2001, providing web consulting and development services to clients in the U.S. and in Europe. Joe writes and speaks regularly on important topics in accessible web development and web standards. Keep up with Joe at Joe Dolson Accessible Web Design or follow Joe on Twitter.

User Experience
6 Accessibility Basics Cause 97% of Errors

June 28, 2022 • Joseph C. Dolson

An accessible ecommerce site doesn't require an expert. Learn the six most common accessibility errors and how to fix them in-house.
Platforms & Apps
Setting Up an Accessible Shopify Store

July 25, 2021 • Joseph C. Dolson

Ecommerce has come a long way in accommodating consumers with disabilities. I've addressed over the years many accessibility aspects of online shopping, from screen readers to lawsuits. Shopify, the focus of this post, is a rare ecommerce platform that supplies Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates.
Code
You Can’t Solve Accessibility with 1 Line of Code

March 14, 2021 • Joseph C. Dolson

Accessibility overlays are third-party web scripts that alter the user experience. Providers of overlays sometimes claim that installing their script will prevent lawsuits in the U.S. under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Let me be blunt: these products will not protect you from lawsuits or necessarily help visitors with accessibility needs.
User Experience
WCAG 2.1 a Welcome Update to Web Accessibility

February 18, 2019 • Joseph C. Dolson

WCAG 2.1 is the first major update to web accessibility guidelines since 2008. Rather than writing a new set from scratch, the W3C amended the existing guidelines to add several new key recommendations.
User Experience
The Legal Picture for Web Accessibility in 2019

January 30, 2019 • Joseph C. Dolson

The Americans with Disabilities Act requires websites to be accessible to disabled users. This has been well established in the courts — most recently in a decision by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals against Domino's Pizza.
User Experience
Understanding ARIA, for Web Accessibility

September 1, 2016 • Joseph C. Dolson

If you research web accessibility, you’re likely to run into ARIA — Accessible Rich Internet Applications. Some will call it the solution to all web accessibility issues. Others will condemn ...
Content Marketing
5 Rules for Publishing Accessible Content

July 27, 2016 • Joseph C. Dolson

Creating a website that’s fully accessible to disabled users is typically a collaborative effort. You can hire the best teams of designers and developers, but if you don’t provide content ...
User Experience
5 Basics to Make a Website Accessible

May 27, 2016 • Joseph C. Dolson

The topics of accessibility, screen readers, and how users interact with voice command applications can be challenging to grasp. But for 90 percent of websites, there are simple choices that ...
User Experience
How to Measure Color Contrast, for Web Accessibility

April 28, 2016 • Joseph C. Dolson

The essence of accessible color contrast is simple. Given a foreground color and a background color, the contrast between those two must be distinguishable in a wide variety of environments,
User Experience
Using Keyboard-only Navigation, for Web Accessibility

March 30, 2016 • Joseph C. Dolson

At many of the web development conferences I attend, there is a talk on how to use an integrated development environment to aid in programming. The speaker will almost invariably ...
User Experience
How to Make Videos Accessible for Blind, Disabled Users

February 28, 2016 • Joseph C. Dolson

A video is a compelling option when you want to demonstrate a product or show off its features. But a video can cause accessibility challenges. They aren’t insurmountable, by any ...
Schools & Resources
WordPress Accessibility Resources

December 5, 2013 • Joseph C. Dolson

WordPress is the foundation for many websites. Roughly 40 percent of the top 10,000 sites in the world use it, including ecommerce sites, blogs, major online publications, and web applications. Whether you’re ...
Code
What Are AJAX and Dynamic JavaScript?

June 16, 2010 • Joseph C. Dolson

Editor's Note: Ecommerce merchants operate businesses using complex technologies. We launched our "Need to Know" series to help merchants obtain a basic understanding of these technologies, recognizing that most merchants are not web developers or programmers. In this installment, contr...
Code
What Is HTML 5?

May 5, 2010 • Joseph C. Dolson

Editor's Note: Ecommerce merchants use complex technologies in their businesses. A working, "need to know" understanding of these technologies can help merchants. To address this, we've launched our "Need to Know" series, whereby we'll address complex topics in a manner that can benefit...
User Experience
Accessibility Review: Target.com

March 11, 2010 • Joseph C. Dolson

Target.com is well known in the world of web accessibility. It was sued in 2006 by the National Federation of the Blind, Bruce F. Sexton, Jr., and the National Federation of the Blind of California because its website was not accessible to visually impaired shoppers. The lawsuit was ult...
Social Media
Accessibility and Social Media

January 21, 2010 • Joseph C. Dolson

Social media can be a terrific way to share information with your customers, provide them with crucial support, and otherwise communicate with them. But almost all social media sites have accessibility problems. Though they are fairly accessible as a group, they do have a variety of i...
User Experience
Accessibility: How Many Disabled Web Users Are There?

December 2, 2009 • Joseph C. Dolson

Ecommerce merchants spend a lot of time thinking about statistics. They try to gauge who is visiting their website, what products consumers are most interested in, and how consumers are finding those products. Without knowing about their audience, merchants have a difficult time marketi...
User Experience
Accessibility Review: PetsContained.com

October 1, 2009 • Joseph C. Dolson

Disabled consumers often face great challenges when browsing and making purchases online. Perhaps as many as ten percent of online shoppers have a disability, such as low-or-no vision or an inability to use a keyboard, that can make it difficult to understand content and navigate websit...
User Experience
Accessibility Review: LorisWigsite.com

September 6, 2009 • Joseph C. Dolson

Disabled Internet users often face great challenges when browsing and making purchases online. Perhaps as many as ten percent of online shoppers have a disability, such as low-or-no vision or an inability to use a keyboard, that can make it difficult to understand content and navigate w...
User Experience
Accessibility and the Checkout Process

August 11, 2009 • Joseph C. Dolson

A crucial element of any ecommerce website is the ability for all customers to complete a purchase on the site, including those with disabilities. If a potential customer cannot navigate your online store's shopping cart or checkout process, it makes little difference what kind of acces...
User Experience
Web Accessibility and the Law

June 30, 2009 • Joseph C. Dolson

The state of legal requirements and protections concerning the accessibility of websites is far from uniform. Many countries have some form of web accessibility laws in place, but the extent of those laws is radically variable. Furthermore, as many websites serve multiple countries, the...
User Experience
New Accessibility Guidelines Part IV: Robustness

May 22, 2009 • Joseph C. Dolson

This is the fourth article in my series on the new WCAG 2.0. The previous installments are "A Welcomed Update," "Part II: Operability," and "Part III: Understandability." In this article, I'll addresses “robustness."
User Experience
New Accessibility Guidelines Part III: Understandability

April 22, 2009 • Joseph C. Dolson

This is the third article in my series on the new WCAG 2.0. The previous installments are "A Welcomed Update" and "Part II: Operability." In this article, I'll addresses “understandability."
User Experience
New Accessibility Guidelines Part II: Operability

March 24, 2009 • Joseph C. Dolson

This is the second article in my series on WCAG 2.0. The first installment, "New Accessibility Guidelines A Welcomed Update," we published last month. The concept behind website operability is simple: Can everybody use the tools and mechanisms required to operate your website?
User Experience
New Accessibility Guidelines A Welcomed Update

February 25, 2009 • Joseph C. Dolson

The World Wide Web Consortium recently approved new accessibility guidelines. Passed in December 2008, the new "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0" is the official recommendation for web accessibility for the disabled. This new WCAG 2.0 document, a welcomed update, replaces...
User Experience
Accessibility: Making Video and Audio Usable For The Deaf

November 6, 2008 • Joseph C. Dolson

Using video and audio in a website increases the probability of an accessibility problem. Where text can be readily translated into a wide variety of alternative mediums for the disabled, the complex nature of video and audio make this kind of machine-generated comprehension nearly impo...
User Experience
Customer Service For The Hearing Impaired

July 15, 2008 • Joseph C. Dolson

In an era of Internet commerce, it’s an unsurprising phenomenon that we expect the vast majority of our interactions with customers to happen in an online environment. The expectation is that people will send an email, contact us through support forms or simply place an order. But it’s ...