An Accent on Access: Writing HTML for the Widest
Possible Audience

Web authors are often tempted to use the latest and sexiest means to
present their information. "Hot" and "Cool" sites use dancing
graphics, frames, tables, specific fonts, background and foreground
colors to entice the reader and delight the eye. Sound clips often
convey emotional content that cannot be expressed in text. Digital
video clips are jerky but they do move.

This tends to disenfranchise some users, however. When we put up web
pages to provide information to our clientele, we need to remember
their limitations, and make our information accessible. Deaf readers
need text support for sound clips, as well as visual clues to any
audio stimuli, including beeps and bells. Blind readers need to be
able to access the information content through text presented in a
linear manner, so that it can be rendered as sound by their
specialized equipment. Readers at the end of a telephone line need
access to the information content even when they turn off display of
inline images, and readers with older computers need pages that work with a
text browser, such as Lynx.

The presentation will demonstrate HTML coding techniques to enhance
accessibility without totally forsaking attractiveness. The
potential audience will be web authors who can understand HTML tagging
without lengthy explanations.