Accessibility
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Business
Absence of U.S. Regulation Leads to Web Accessibility Lawsuits
December 15, 2015 • Armando Roggio
In the absence of clear U.S. government regulation or even clear guidance, there have been many web accessibility lawsuits that simultaneously bring attention to web accessibility and, perhaps unfairly and ...
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User Experience
Strategies for Website Accessibility, for Ecommerce
December 14, 2015 • Armando Roggio
Goodwill, smart business, and even vague governmental regulation should compel ecommerce businesses to make websites accessible to all potential customers, including those who are blind or deaf or have other ...
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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 ...
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User Experience
Screen Readers: Eight Frequently Asked Questions
July 27, 2010 • PEC Staff
Editor's Note: The article below discusses screen readers, the software that reads aloud text on a computer screen. Screen reader software allows visually handicapped consumers to use Internet sites. To help text-reading consumers understand what a visually-handicapped user experiences,...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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."
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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."
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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?
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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...
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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...
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Business
Video Tutorial: Assessing Accessibility
August 26, 2008 • Brian Getting
There are a number of compelling reasons to make sure that your website is accessible to people with disabilities. In some cases meeting accessibility compliance standards is a legal obligation. However, in most cases (such as ecommerce merchants) it is just a good idea. Not only will...
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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 ...
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Conversion
Accessibility: Use Audio To Describe Your Products
June 4, 2008 • Joseph Monks
On Memorial Day my wife and I went to see the new Indiana Jones film. You might find that odd, a blind person going to the movies. But it’s possible, thanks to audio-description technology, which allows the blind to follow what happens on-screen. It got me thinking: How could such a se...
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Conversion
Bells And Whistles, Or Accessibility Stop Signs?
April 2, 2008 • Joseph Monks
With the advent of high-speed Internet, a treasure trove of possibilities presented themselves to the web developer. Java, embedded video, Flash and other coding options afforded online retailers the opportunity to provide entertainment, in addition to merchandise. Visual animation is ...
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Design & Development
Testing Site Accessibility
January 18, 2008 • Joseph Monks
Here's how to perform a standard test to see if your website and store are accessible to the vision impaired. Let It Be Seen By All First, for PC users, open the Narrator program. For Mac users, use the APPLE+F5 keystroke to turn on VoiceOver. Do this before you open your browser. O...
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Business
Quick Query: Filmmaker Joseph Monks and Web Accessibility
October 17, 2007 • PEC Staff
Joseph Monks is a Miami, Fla.-based filmmaker and freelance writer. His new horror film, "The Bunker," is soon to be released and details of it and his other films projects can be found at Sightunseenpictures.com. Monks is also blind, and we asked him about blindness, the Internet, ecommerce...
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Design & Development
Tech Support July 2007: Accessibility
July 16, 2007 • Brian Getting
I keep hearing about accessibility. What is it and why is it important? Accessibility, in the context of a website, is the measure of how easily people with disabilities can perceive, navigate, access and interact with electronic content and information. People with disabilities face...
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Conversion
Accessibility – The Wheelchair Ramp to Your Website
November 13, 2006 • PEC Staff
The original creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, dreamed of an information space that was open to everyone on the planet. But like many dreams, imagination took over and the vision became layered with roadblocks that effectively brought down the shutters for many users. Acc...