The ARIA spec can be a bit intimidating, but there’s some decent stuff out there to help you through, including Gez Lemon’s introduction.

Like you, I’ve always meant to do more. I use the techniques I know of, but I also know there is a lot more to it and I always intend to delve deeper. But it always gets put off in favor of something else, even though it shouldn’t.

What good is my alt text if it’s poorly written? What’s the best way to describe the image, really? And having never used a screen reader myself to experience it, how can I be sure what I’m doing really works?

I’ve delayed investigating the most fundamental aspects — where do I find assistive software for testing? Are there any tutorials for writing good alternative text? Only after simulating the experience and assuring my content itself is accessible can I really begin to think critically about the techniques to deliver content accessibly…

While testing to address the needs of the non-sighted user is a great thing to implement into your QA cycle, don’t forget that there are other types of access barriers that also need to be accounted for. Users with mobility impairments, audio impairments and cognitive impairments all have needs that transcend simple “alt text for images”.

If in doubt, developers should not hesitate to pose questions to any number of on-line fora where old dogs like me hang out: http://www.webaim.org has a great mailing list, as does the W3C’s WAI http://w3c.org/wai. The UK’s Guild of Accessible Web Developers (GAWDS – http://www.gawds.org/ ) has an active mailing list as well as other useful resources, and Accessify http://accessify.com/ features a number of useful developer tools and a great forum. Finally, on-line educational resources include both the WaSP Interact http://interact.webstandards.org/ and Opera’s Web Standards Curriculum http://www.opera.com/company/education/curriculum/ providing developers with potential solutions to improve accessibility of their sites.

Thanks Kyle for “shedding some light” on an important topic.

It appears that the platform she’s using even supports the provision of alternative text, since there’s a show/hide link for it there.

More webcomics need alternative text!

I gather, then, that you’ve never been able to access the content of any of the comic strips. In your opinion, is some sort of summary that’s presented in a format like a movie script a sensible way to make it accessible for blind visitors?