The Interplay Between Web Aesthetics and Accessibility [#accessibility #a11y #aesthetics #ASSETS11]

‘Web pages judged on the classical dimension as being visually clean showed significant correlations with accessibility, suggesting that visual cleanness may be a suitable proxy measure for accessibility as far as people with visual impairments are concerned. Expressive designs and other aesthetic dimensions showed no such correlation, however, demonstrating that an expressive or aesthetically pleasing Web design is not a barrier to accessibility.’

Authonomy Points the Way to Open Peer Reviewing

Authonomy is a unique online community that connects readers, writers and publishing professionals. It was conceived and built by editors at HarperCollins Publishers. They are in ‘beta’ at the moment, so they’re still developing and perfecting the site.

Web 2 and Web Accessibility: Research Challenges and Opportunities

It is obvious that the current interaction model of the Web, as used by assistive technologies, is changing. Further, that this change is starting to increase at such a rate that without timely and prompt action blind users will be barred from using this ‘new’ Web. Current access technology assumes a static interaction model, and expects that once the audio rendering has been performed no other changes to content already spoken will occur. This assumption is fundamentally flawed when dealing with Ajax sites and technologies.

Interface Systems Evaluation & Innovation

I recently came across a paper discussing the evaluation of user interface systems. In it the author proposes that complex user interface systems and architectures do not readily yield to the research methods we currently use. It was at this point I started to bristle with derision in a very defensive…