Frequently asked technical questions
We have created an on-line web accessibility course to answer most of the common technical questions we are asked. If you have a reasonable knowledge of web accessibility and just need the answer to a single question you can use the course list below for reference.
The following is a list of the individual modules of the course. To follow the course, including exercises, you will need to register at the course home page
- Introduction to how the web works (lesson1a)
- Tools and techniques used by disabled people for browsing the web (lesson1b)
- Writing accessible text content for a website (lesson2a)
- Defining language,abbreviations and quotations for accessible content ( lesson2b)
- Organising page content for assistive technologies (lesson2c)
- Creating a semantic structure for accessible web pages (lesson3a)
- Using the list elements to aid accessibilty of web pages (lesson3b)
- Using data tables to aid the accessibility of web pages (lesson3c)
- Benefits of a sound page structure and using accurate HTML or XHTML (lesson3d)
- Using stylesheets so that pages look good and are accessible (lesson4a)
- Creating a style sheet (lesson4b)
- Example of how a page layout can be changed by different stylesheets (lesson4c)
- Relative (proportional) dimensioning for accessible web pages (lesson4d)
- Benefits of the standard page layout (lesson4e)
- Using tables for an accessible web page layout (lesson5a)
- How to make frames accesible (lesson5b)
- Suitable fonts and how to apply them for an accessible website (lesson6a)
- Using colour when creating an accessible website ( lesson6b)
- How to use images to create an accessible website (lesson7a)
- How to use CSS for decorative images in an accessible website (lesson7b)
- How to use image maps so that they are accessible (lesson7c)
- Using device independant scripts (lesson8a)
- Embeding animations without creating barriers to accessibility (lesson8b)
- Using audio and video in an accessible website (lesson8c)
- How to create accessible forms (lesson9a)
- Making forms easier for disabled people to use (lesson9b)
- Creating a site map for an accessible website (lesson10a)
- Creating accessible navigation menu bars (lesson10b)
- Designing accessible navigation links (lesson10c)
- How to include non-html documents in an accessible website (lesson11a)
- How to test a website for accessibility (lesson12a)
- A simple testing procedure for accessibility (lesson12b)
- Introduction to the W3C and S508 Accessibility guidelines (guidelinesintro)
- WAI guidelines Principle 1
- WAI guidelines Principle 2
- WAI guidelines Principle 3
- WAI guidelines Principle 4
- S508 Accessibility guidelines
Other occassional questions
If you have an accessibility problem not covered in the topics above you are welcome to send us a qestion using our contact form. If we think that the question is of general interest we will publish it below.
SiteMorse fails my site since installing Google Ananlytics
Q. My boss has insisted that we install Google analytics and now complains that our SiteMorse ranking has gone down. I can't find any information on the Google website.
A. The Google Analytics script does not affect the accessibility of a page at all. The application is a simple script that sends information back to Google, it does nothing to the page itself. This "error reporting" is a typical problem with SiteMorse and other automated testing software. Robots cannot distinguish between scripts that do something on a page (present information or perform an action) and scripts that do nothing other than analyse data. From an accessibility point of view the Google Analytics script is irrelevant - however if you want to maintain your SiteMorse ranking you can manually add a "noscript" alternative to the Google Analytics code. Look at the bottom of the page where the Google code is placed and add the following immediately after the closing </script> tags. There are two scripts so you need to add this to both.
<noscript><!--feed the robots --></noscript></>
The comment inside the <noscript> tag is purely to trick the robot so it doesn't report an empty tag. If you view the source of this page you will see that I have done the same trick here because I am fed up with SiteMorse trying to get me to sign up by saying that my pages are not accessible !