PUBLIC MARKS from Monique with tags [en] & ux

The reality is that accessibility is simply a key part of UX. A truly outstanding digital experience is a fusion of accessibility, usability, creativity and technology. The trick is to weave those things together, and to do that successfully there needs to be a cross pollination of skills and expertise.

The good news is that accessibility is usability under a magnifying glass. If you’re thinking about great usability, the chances are that you’re already thinking about great accessibility too.

In my experience, the range of parameters devised is fairly large and it is easy to get lost in selecting configurations or even anticipating how well they will fit user needs. Still, these tactics seem important for practitioners to apply when appropriate. The challenges strike me as fundamental, given the range of needs and potential interface designs.

This means the user does not have to think about the device he is using, changes in the environment, or changes in context, and can rely on great functionality and ease of use independent of his situation.

It can seem brilliant to setup fancy animations and fade-in effects for each of your sub-menus. And with the jQuery UI library it’s never been easier to scale these out into your own solutions, either. But everything fancy and sleek will simply not fit into each design. The purpose of any navigation is lead visitors deeper into your website by the simplest methods possible.

While preparing my HTML workshop, I’ve been re-reading W3C specs in far further detail than I ever would’ve imagined. The reading experience is far from delightful. Not only is the text the entire browser width in measure, but it’s dense and laborious to read. No wonder browser vendors have traditionally missed subtle details.