Melissa McAvoy Offers 8 Tips for Accessible Blogging

Melissa McAvoy, a web accessibility and usability specialist, shares 8 Tips for Accessible Blogging, a quick list of tips to help you make your blog or website accessible to everyone, including the blind and visually impaired.

A lot of the tips make good sense whether or not you are physically impaired.

2. Always include meaningful alternative text for images and any other non-text content.

i.e. “graphical representations of text (including symbols), animations (e.g., animated GIFs), ascii art, scripts, images used as list bullets, spacers, sounds (played with or without user interaction), stand-alone audio files, audio tracks of video, and video”

I’m totally frustrated with blog posts consisting of nothing but a Flash, podcast or video player waiting to play the content. I want to know what it is before I click and download megabytes of something onto my computer. Don’t you?

If you are looking for more information on web accessibility, also see Mike Cherim’s article in Accessites.org called “Practical, Entry-Level Web Accessibility”.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

6 Comments

first50

Posted June 27, 2007 at 6:57 am | Permalink

Can you check on Melissa McAvoy’s URL again. I’d like to read her whole article but there’s some problem with the URL.

Lorelle VanFossen

Posted June 27, 2007 at 9:09 am | Permalink

Thanks for catching this. She changed her URL since I wrote this. ARGH. 😀

Kort

Posted June 28, 2007 at 1:12 pm | Permalink

The tips are not just blogging tecnique, include color orientation, graphics etc. However, nice reminder, worth reading. Big thanks 🙂

ichank

Posted July 17, 2007 at 10:23 pm | Permalink

Good info to get web accesible for everyone.

Andre Ward

Posted August 1, 2007 at 12:56 pm | Permalink

I do get frustrated when I don’t understand the image and how it is related to the article. If there’s an brief description at least it makes it more cool for the reader when he reads the article.

Ken Nickless

Posted April 27, 2008 at 12:18 am | Permalink

Nice article by Melissa MacAvoy. I certainly agree with the point about the clear and simple language. I think it’s important that any blog readers feel that the blog owner is writing to them personally, rather than reading a forced article.It gives the reader the feeling of ‘belonging’ and will more that likely make them return for more.