5 ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY: SCREEN READERS AND BROWSERS

by Jim Thatcher

Assistive technologies are an indispensable assessment tool for the web developer. It is not possible to determine a website's compliance with most of the requirements of accessible web design using a conventional browser alone.

Many requirements are indirect, in that they require information to be available to users through their assistive technology. This information may not be exposed by conventional browsers. An example of this is the requirement for markup in data tables to indicate which cells are heading cells (Section 508 provisions §1194.22(g, h) and WCAG 1.0 Checkpoints 5.1 and 5.2). Sometimes, this markup is reflected in the visual presentation. For example, if the ...

Get Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.