I was recently reminded of a talk I heard back in 2008 at php|works in Atlanta. Eric David Benari gave a great talk on usability and accessibility for sites, and even though this was quite a while ago, the talk topic remains relevant today. One of the main things that I got out of that talk was how the front-end formatting affected disabled visitors. This struck home for me as years earlier, I had volunteered at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s yearly convention. One of my duties was leading tours for the Blind Veterans’ Association. This included riding around on a tram with them outlining everything I could see in great detail. It also included taking them through various planes and helping them feel/listen their way through the tour.

Photograph by Don Norman of his personal coffeepot.

After several years of doing this, I had gotten to know several of the veterans pretty well. One year, one of the veterans, Dale, knowing that I was “into all that computer stuff”, proudly displayed his new laptop. “Bet you’ve never seen a computer like this,” he said, and he was right. I had never seen a computer for the blind. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that it had never occurred to me that such a thing might even exist. It was shaped like a normal laptop, but instead of a screen, it just had a plastic cover to protect the keys. Everything was vocalized to the user. Watching him use the laptop, I realized how much the front-end design affects a non-visual browser, but at the time, I wasn’t involved in programming yet so I didn’t know what could be done about it.

Fast forward about ten years, and I had begun working in web design, programming in PHP and attending php|works. As I sat in Eric David’s talk listening to him outline the disability accessibility guidelines, I realized that I could now make a difference to users like the Blind Veteran’s Association. I have been hooked ever since. Ask Cal, I am always harping on alt tags on images. Ask anyone who has taken my Essentials PHP course; I am relentless on good error reporting in web forms. Ask all the designers I’ve annoyed over the years because I insisted they use text instead of graphics for the content of the site.

I honestly believe these little things add up to a big improvement in usability and quality. Not only that, but these improvements help your search engine ranking and the mobile accessibility of your site too. So next time you are working on a project, consider making sure your site is easily accessible to your disabled patrons. Not sure where to start? Check out the W3C-WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.