The future of web accessibility

This is an excellent article which offers a pragmatic view to current, and future, website accessibility. One of my challenges in working in this area is that the current guidelines are more about what not to do, rather than guidance on what to do. It is little wonder that non-experts are confused, and that many sites fail to achieve best practice.

With reference to Trenton's point about accessibilty experts becoming more and more important for organisations in interpreting WACG 2.0 guidelines correctly, my concern is who is the expert? I personally feel comfortable with my generalist knowledge of website accessibility and usability issues, however I'm not a technologist and can't really see myself being in a position to offer advice on AJAX and other technology advances. Trenton highlights the increasing complexity of accessibility, and possibly only multi-skilled agencies will be able to offer companies the range of skills and knowledge necessary? Alternatively, these larger agencies could be jack-of-all trades, and don't have the in-depth knowledge of the independent expert?

One final thought. In a similar vein to the Amazon example, this is a completely 'non-accessible' Flash interface that I came across at a previous e-consultancy conference and thought it was one of the best pieces of design I had seen. It is Vodaphone's German site and if you can manage the German language labels you should get the drift. Selecting the ideal mobile phone isn't the easiest task, however by selecting the elements that you want (battery life, camera, MP3 player, etc) the choice of phones is reduced to leave only content (phones) that match your criteria. Go to http://www.vodafone.de/start.vhtml and select Handy Finder which is to the right of the Search function.

Alistair Campbell
Director
www.conkerhouse.com