Comments | northlighthero: How can I make this blog more accessible?

northlighthero

How can I make this blog more accessible?

May 11, 2009 17:46

After reading "How POUR is Your Blog?" by Glenda Watson Hyatt over at www.doitmyselfblog.com/ I've been trying to teach myself some Accessibility tricks for blogging. So far, I'm all but striking out.

I don't speak html, but with some laboriousness I can read parts of it, so I think I've managed to see where in the code for an individual post I ( Read more... )

disablism

Comments 6

bellamagic May 11 2009, 22:38:47 UTC

northlighthero May 11 2009, 22:46:39 UTC

Hmm. Then the 64-dollar follow-up question: Are HTML coding and CSS skills within my reasonable reach to acquire? If so, suggestions on best first step?

Guess I gotta go think.

bellamagic May 11 2009, 23:10:57 UTC

northlighthero May 12 2009, 01:55:59 UTC

Oooh, oooh, I actually wrote some code! and on the 5th try I even got it to open as a webpage (and not in "default RTF" like TextEdit wanted)! Oooh, oooh, maybe I can learn this stuff!

Thanks a bazillion for making it sound so easy. My first page is pretty boring, but that it exists at all is a big step forward. Just at the moment I'm amazed that I let web-pagery intimidate me so much.

Watch out, though; you may have created a monster.

jenett May 11 2009, 22:43:02 UTC

LJ is not well designed for accessibility.

Dreamwidth, which is a code fork currently in open beta, is actively working on better accessibility (for example, they include an alt-text area for userpics as a matter of course.) They're hoping that some of these code changes will get incorporated into LJ's code (most of them would be relatively easy to do), but LJ would have to make that decision to do so.

For people reading from mobile devices, providing information about LJ's Lynx site scheme (which is the scaled-down version designed for people who either don't want/don't handle images or which some people use for mobile use) might be helpful. Setting is about half way down the page here: http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=display

northlighthero May 12 2009, 01:53:24 UTC

Thanks. I'm not much of a power user, so I think I'll wait until beta is overwith. It does utterly amaze me that a medium with so much potential to level the playing field should make simple accessibility so tough ... but whatever.

I hope LJ decides to follow Dreamwidth on accessibility issues; I'd rather not move.