Product Description

Using a strategic approach to the issues in a journalistic style, this book will be a foundation for how people think about this issue going forward-the first book people would read on the topic, before delving into the minutiae of the moment.

With lawsuits and human-rights complaints proliferating, and with simple awareness of accessibility percolating through the industry, soon it will be hard to find a web shop that won't be producing accessible sites, whether it presently has the experience and know-how or not. Government mandates, lawsuits from disability groups, more non-English speaking web users, and an increasing population of Web-enabled devices make this a vital topic.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #588233 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From the Back Cover

Using a strategic approach to the issues in a journalistic style, this book will be a foundation for how people think about this issue going forward-the first book people would read on the topic, before delving into the minutiae of the moment.

With lawsuits and human-rights complaints proliferating, and with simple awareness of accessibility percolating through the industry, soon it will be hard to find a web shop that won't be producing accessible sites, whether it presently has the experience and know-how or not. Government mandates, lawsuits from disability groups, more non-English speaking web users, and an increasing population of Web-enabled devices make this a vital topic.

About the Author

Toronto journalist and accessibility consultant Joe Clark's 20-year obsession with accessibility dates back to a fateful winter night in the mid-'70s when he stumbled across a captioned TV show. Clark bolsters his portfolio of nearly 400 published articles with a strong background in graphic design and over ten years of experience online.

He writes, programs, and designs web sites from scratch. Dubbed "the king of closed captions" by the Atlantic Monthly, Clark also consults with clients to improve the quality and quantity of accessible sites, video, cinema, and television.

Customer Reviews

Good technical detail but too limited
I was waiting for the release of this book for some time as it seemed so promising. Accessibility is a rapidly developing field of study for web developers, newer options and demands are emerging all the time as more and more is known and learnt about how disabled users use the web.

With this in mid its unfortunate that this book could not take advantage of advances made in the last year. I was hoping that the most recent book would be the most up to date and cover topics like Flash MX. (Especially given the delyed release date)

The technical coverage of HTML is probably the best I've read, with good, clear examples of accessible XHTML code. However to simply ignore the issues raised by the use of JavaScript within HTML pages, is sadly dissappointing. These are exactly the fuzzy grey areas that need to be in a book like this.

The main problem I had with this book is that it is trying to cover too many bases. The blurb would have you believe that it contains information on how to mange accessible web projects, but to concentrate so heavily on code examples, contradicts this.

What we really need is less examples of how to code and more examples of how these projects have been managed and run successfully in other organisations so that we have a chance of doing the same. I was so unimpressed with what was missing from this book, that I'm probably being unfair to the good stuff.

Conclusion: If this book was released last year, it would have been essential reading. If you've already read other books about coding accessibility for the web, you can probably afford to miss this one. If you're looking for a good introduction to web accessibility issues, you can do no better.

Not a very accessible book
I've just skimmed through the book.

The typefaces are too small and not very clear. I am very surprised Clark has not considered that some readers may be getting on in years and whose eyes aren't what they used to be. I am not partially sighted but I wear glasses. There must be many people with worse eyesight than mine who would similarly not enjoy reading the book and probably just skip to what might be interesting, like I did.

Then when reading, info is not chunked into easy to read pieces or used proper headings (heading typefaces are also confusing and conflicting).

Probably a good book, but whether I will ever get around to reading it properly, I don't know. It seems too much like hard work. I read Zeldman's book (Designing with web standards), he recommends Clark. That was easy to read and logically laid out. Clark could do with asking Zeldman's advice

Somewhere Clark says NOT to use Arial. Dyslexics would disagree with this. It is one of their favourite fonts.

A mountain of knowledge
Depending on your approach to website design and development, accessibility is becoming a very 'hot-topic'.

One very good book is Steve Kruggs "Don't Make Me Think"; another is this offering by Joe Clark.

There isn't anything Joe leaves unturned while taking the reader through the myriad of web-based accessibility. Not just referring to the obviousness of visually impaired visitors but also those with learning and motor difficulties for whom reading, navigating and otherwise doing what most of us purely take for granted.

This is a very detailed book and shouldn't be considered a light-read but as a valuable resource for any website builder who plans to run ecommerce, charity or public information websites.
You don't HAVE to read from cover-to-cover but this book should be on your shelf as it's worth checking out at least once in your life.