Website for the blind?

Question

I am trying to make a website for the blind compatible on all devices (iPad, iPhone, and PC). I am looking for some good demos and tutorials.

Please help me learn how to make website for blind people using a Braille display.

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Overview

Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards (Section 508)

What improvements to accessibility are offered by HTML5?

Answer 2

If you do nothing else, remember three things:

• The content is the most important thing (not the UI). The next most important thing is to use good semantic HTML - use headings H1-H6 wisely to indicate the structure of your content, use lists when appropriate.
• The second most important thing is to write good alt text for images. Use short, descriptive text to describe the function of the image ("warning", or "brick house"). If you specifically don't want an image to be read out, because it is purely decorative, set the alt text to an empty string rather than leaving it out.
• Finally, if you want to style your site to make it look pretty, do this using CSS - the screen reader will ignore the CSS, but the site will be more credible if it looks nice - even if blind people are the primary audience.

Finally, if blind people are the primary audience for your site, then consider not using Ajax - while screen readers do cope with Ajax to varying degrees, a site with full page refreshes is much easier to use.

There are many other sites on "web accessibility" but this is the core foundation.