Jeffrey Veen

Great essay, Jeffrey, and exactly correct. I'm just pleased to note that I'm starting to have similar experiences with my own work.

Jeff, It's nice to hear that accessibility can be easy if done right.

However, one of the example links just didn't make sense to me. I looked at the
link labeled "Sliding Doors" using w3m 0.4.1 as my browser. All I saw was a few links
that all seemed to point to "is not found" and some mysterious text:

"Here, we've eliminated the id="current" in favor of adding unique IDs to each
list item. We also add an ID to the body element. By changing the selectors in
the CSS, we can identify the "current" tab through the use of conditional
Descendant Selectors."

I really wasn't trying to be a pain in the ass. I use happen to use "snownews"
as my newsreader, because it fits in my terminal-app flow nicely along with
'mutt' for mail and 'slrn' for news. Because it's in a terminal, it sends me
w3m for my browser, which I'm guessing is ignoring some cool CSS effect that's
there...

Great panel again Jeff. Thanks for the summary. I had made it in late and didn't have my laptop ready for taking notes. Wished I could have stayed around for the panel you did for JJG on Monday afternoon.

To Mark:
I think the point is that the Sliding Doors page is just an example, so you are likely to encouter "is not found" links because there are no links tied to the buttons.

I have a site close to launching that uses the sliding doors technique. I will drop you the URL when it launches and maybe you can give me some feedback on how it works in your browser.

"...accessibility comes for free."

Couldn't have put it better.

Mark, I've got a site using the sliding doors technique out in the wild, if you want to see how it works in your browser. (like Jeremy, I'd be curious to hear how it works for you.)

http://www.pierce.ctc.edu/studentlife/slam/

and there's definitely a different headspace that you get into when you start designing for the Web as a native form. (I wish I could've been there for your presentation...among other things....)

Your hair looked good that day.

FYI -- the Adaptive Path site still has a glaring problem for Mac IE 5.1 viewers that I noted many months ago: the entire teampics div looks blank to me. I submitted an email on the site months ago, to which I received no response, and the same problem remains.

To the larger issue of building things "correctly" from scratch, wouldn't that be nice? I've been designing sites since '95 and am fluent with tables, and in the past six months or so I've begun learning how to use CSS for things other than controlling typography (which you do not completely have to let go of, by the way -- that's just non-designer arrogance on your part), the thing I've found is that there is an unbelievable dearth of readable tutorials on how to be a responsible designer using CSS for layout. Not all of us get to have teams of programmers working with us who can easily read and grasp Eric Meyer's "CSS: The Definitive Guide" ("definitive" being an overly generous term in this case), nor do all of us have a team of people who can do extensive QA.

Believe me, as someone who works on sites devoted to adult literacy, I want my sites to be as accessible as possible. But the resources need to be there to show me the way.

I'm so sick of the proselytizing. I'm happy for you that you get to live in your web-design fantasy world. For those of us in the real world, give us something that will actually show us how to achieve building a great-looking, accessible site from scratch, something that will work in most browsers and degrade well for the ones that don't work.

Sorry for the rant, but at some point it's just not enough to talk about how easy everything in standards-compliant web design is. I was at SXSW last year and heard the same pie-in-the-sky crap. I want to believe, really, I do. Where are the effective tools and resources to make the dream a reality instead of a recurring nightmare of incompatibility and unreliable code?

I'd find your page more accessible if you let the font size change with my IE font-size selection.

I'm with Cheshire on this one. This accessibility thing is *poof* gone when it comes down to delivering an e-commerce site to subscribers who want more out of their experience. I work for a multi-billion dollar financial information publisher that is interested in delivering maximum functionality for minimum cost and effort. That means you target the majority of users and strong-arm the rest into the compliance level that you dictate. Your fantasy web world is all blog and brochure-ware and no bling bling, buddy. I will agree with your title, though. I don't care about accessibility either. If you don't use what I choose you lose, not me. If people want what you've got, then you dictate the terms. I'm tired of this whole flippin' freak show of web whimsical weenies running around talking about the lowest common denominator. I will tell any end-user right off. If you're still using Netscape 4.7x you need help.

I'd find your page more accessible if you got rid of the JS error messages in IE6.

Problem is, my users are most often people in libraries, community colleges, and/or adult schools, so it's a better bet that my users are looking at sites with older browsers. I neither get to be cavalier like Marc (sorry, babe, I don't think we're with each other on this one) nor pie-in-the-sky like Jeffrey. The one thing that always, always, always gets left out of accessibility discussions is that good visual design is as much a part of accessibility as is the technical end of design and production. That means typography, graphics, the entire design toolbox. To disdain traditional designers the way Jeffrey does above is simply divisive and petulant.

I'm all for the web as a place to create interactive design spaces that address multiple intelligences, but that doesn't mean you should write the design book over from page one. You're only writing later chapters. Please, try to make them readable and informative.

Elaine: your site doesn't work in Mac IE 5.1: the graphics are all out of place and the menu links don't work. Email me and I'll send you a screenshot. Also, try BrowserCam to see how things look in other browsers.

Jeffrey, one more thing: the comment box doesn't remember me. Yes, I know I'm using a crappy browser. But I'm not nearly alone in this. Who knows, maybe you've taken Marc's advice and left behind all the users on Macs who haven't gone to OSX yet, which explains the unfixed bug on Adaptive Path's site. Wish I had that freedom.

You're right, Chesh. We're not together on this. My mistake. I agree with some of your argument on some level. Certainly a lot more than Jeffrey's. But somehow I can't get past the fact that you're pre-OSX. I am just stunned. I don't want to change the topic but, my God, man! Why?

Wow, Marc, I had no idea how right I was about your leaving me in the dust. Now I've seen your website -- or, rather, I haven't seen it in IE 5.1. I had to fire up NS 7.0 (looks kind of buggy in that, by the way -- isn't CSS fun?).

But to your question: I'd delayed this long because OSX didn't have good native font management (as I, unlike Jeffrey, have a deep love for typography), and I had heard things from other designers who work in print as well as on the web that the headaches weren't worth the benefits. So I was waiting for Panther to set things right. Turns out FontBook isn't nearly what it was cracked up to be, or so I heard, but other software has arrived to save the day, namely Font Agent Pro.

So one of these days when I have no deadlines (which is practically never), I'll finally join the party that is OSX. I'm looking forward to OpenType as well as being able to update my iPod and Treo 600 without having to reboot the G4 in Jaguar mode, which are currently the only reasons I ever do so.

(Jeez, Jeffrey, allow HTML formatting in the comments, wouldja? Dayamn.)

While I agree with many of Jeffrey's points about accessibility (and plan to show this to the other developers at my work to try to win over some more converts), I do have to agree with some of the comments that there's still some sites that just won't let us work this way.

Although... in many cases I've found that it's usually the client who won't let us work this way and insists that things be just so on the web site.

Like I said, most designers approaching our medium from another are simply astounded. But I don't care. Because I don't work with them anymore.

Yes you do, pookie.

Here we go again. A man tells about the beauties of web standards, and then comes the response which states:

"Not all of us get to have teams of programmers working with us who can easily read and grasp Eric Meyer's "CSS: The Definitive Guide" ("definitive" being an overly generous term in this case), nor do all of us have a team of people who can do extensive QA."

Sorry Cheshire, but that the fact that you have troubles with implementation of particular technology is your problem, more precisely with your current level of knowledge. As it is my problem as well, from time to time.

I tend to think (and present to people I talk to) that web design is not what they think it is - a crappy business of typing few stuff in FrontPage, smth anyone can pump out. It's damn heard if you want to do it properly. I.e. almost anyone can create a file search program - the difference will be in the time needed for search to finish.

If you can't implement it, do what you can and learn more. But don't preach that it's not worth because it's hard.

Aleksandar, don't mistake me for someone new to web design who depends on graphical web-design software. I've been creating websites for roughly nine years, the first five of those strictly hand-coding. I know table-based design inside and out and can identify and fix any problem anyone has with their tables. Admittedly, tables have a couple of quirks, and it took me a while to come to know them as well as I do.

Therefore, I'm not afraid of spending long hours learning a new technology, and in fact I'm more willing to do so than most designers I know. And I fully believe in the promise of CSS.

But the problem is that the reasons CSS often doesn't work in one way or another has little to do with logic and more to do with the vagaries of browser implementation. Look on A List Apart and you'll see all kinds of articles about how to trick various browsers into doing the simplest things. Even the box model, the core of CSS design, requires a hack to display correctly. Aleksandar, I dare you to look at the box-model hack and tell me that it's something even a dedicated hand-coding web designer could suss on their own.

It's like the standards folks are in an abusive relationship, in which they continually have to defend their wrathful, capricious lover, hiding the bruises their lover has inflicted on them: "Oh, but if you could only see CSS the way I see him -- he's so flexible and accessible when he's not drinking with his browser buddies."

I'll continue to learn CSS, and I'm getting better at it, but I guess I'm going to have to do it more or less on my own (with occasional help from a kind penpal), because the people pushing CSS can't explain practically how to get around its inconsistencies in plain language, for people who aren't hardcore programmers. Not only can't they do it -- as the presentation above makes clear, they don't even want to.

Cheshire, I'll definitely send you an e-mail.... (although, honestly, if it's not something I can suss out easily, I may end up seeing if I can just feed it the N4 stylesheet.)

"But the resources need to be there to show me the way."

I agree with you that the resource question is the biggest hurdle for most people.

I had the extremely illuminating experience of hiring a new assistant a couple of months ago. the "digital design" program that he was in had only a small web component, and they were mostly doing things in Dreamweaver. I talked to him about CSS, and he asked "so, how do I learn?"

I realized that I'd learned gradually, in a combination of reading blogs, books, articles, and the school of hard knocks. (plus a stint on css-discuss.) I didn't have any one resource to give him to say here: do this. and I found it hard even to sum up my *own* experience into a set of simple rules or concepts.

I think "CSS from the ground up" (http://www.wpdfd.com/editorial/basics/index.html) might be a good stab in the right direction, but what I ended up doing was sending him a collection of links and explaining what facet each one might help him with.

we'll see how it works out....

Those sites were all really ugly!

I'm with Aleksandar on this one, and even more so after reading Cheshire's reply. Seriously, Meyer's CSS book was light reading.

The BMH is for ONE browser, one!!! That's not even difficult to pick up either.

Cheshire, you remind me of my old boss. Table-based design was all he knew and he feared so much being at the bottom of the pack he refused to let his developer use CSS at all... and then he lost his job.

"the people pushing CSS can't explain practically how to get around its inconsistencies in plain language, for people who aren't hardcore programmers"

Seriously, as a non-hardcore-programmer, I don't see how you can think CSS is so difficult to pick up and that the proponents aren't helpful at all.

Just try it! Everything I've learned about CSShas been through trial-and-error, and the same goes for those folks "pushing" CSS...

While I understand your reasoning on this argument, I think that not "caring" about accessibility by not testing is short-sighted. More importantly, I think many people are going to read this post and misinterpret it as meaning "standards-based design will make my sites accessible without any extra effort."

While I agree it makes things much better, and closer to accessible, there is absolutely no substitute for testing!

I'll use one form element from the Sprint site as an example: In the middle column, look at the ZIP code field. It has a label, great! but what is the label text: "Find coverage and plans by area." Ok great, so what do I type in the field? Sighted users can see the "Enter zip code" text, but it's removed by JavaScript onfocus, so screen readers can never access it. This type of problem comes up all the time... It happens less to standards-compliant designers, but it still happens all the time.

One of the more humorous examples: alt text on the Yahoo site once was "Y! My friends" which was pronounced by Window Eyes as "why bang my friends." JAWS just screamed "WHY! Oh God, WHY!"

You know, I was going to leave it alone after my last comment, because I've said my piece and at this point it becomes something of a pissing contest. But, well, here we go:

Michael, it's not that the basics of CSS are so difficult. It's also not that I object to a certain amount of trial and error. But when I finally get something to work, I want to be able to say, "Oh, I get it now," like I do when I solve a problem in, say, JavaScript or Flash. With CSS it's just, "Whew, thank God _that_ worked, whichever incantation I said just before I hit 'preview in browser.' On to the next problem!"

And I apologize in advance, because I'm really not into making personal attacks on someone, but you're going to have to show me a slightly more complicated design than what's on your site (http://www.propagandabydesign.com, for reference) before you compare me to your stick-in-the-mud former employer. Looking solely at your site, there's no way I can take you seriously as either a designer, a programmer, or as you bill yourself, "web creator extraordinaire." Meyer's book was light reading for you? Good for you. Show me something impressive you've done all by yourself, and then I'll believe you when you tell me that complex use of CSS that displays reliably in most browswers is not that hard to achieve.

Oh, and by the way: I'm the one in my office trying to make the case _for_ CSS, not against it. Being a skeptic in the face of unbridled zealotry is fine with me. I'm willing -- no, eager -- to be convinced.

Sorry about the typo -- edited that post one too many times. OK, I'm officially done with this topic.

First, I meant no offense of any kind. I said myself that from time to time I too wander in the dark. This is not related to the experience or smth...it just happens.

In such cases, I leave it be, and comeback later.

The largest commercial work I did shows that (http://www.stanjames.com ) From horrible tables it went to almost semantic markup and CSS. Mostly, I was very pleased. The forms were particularly badly marked. I left as it was. After a while, I figured a good way to mark and validate them (see my site) and then applied that as well.
There are still parts where I'm looking for the right solution. Until it's found, I leave it as it is. Nothing wrong with that, IMHO.

As for BMH, the initial version is complicated as hell. I never used it, probably by luck, since I got into all this CSS fun when (S/M)BMH :) was already known. This

padding: 10px;
width:200px;
w\idth:180px;

is quite obvious, once you read the box model problem.

(On a personal note: I miss the IE5 box model model every hour of my development life - it's far more practical then standard one)

Marc: "I don't care about accessibility either. If you don't use what I choose you lose, not me. If people want what you've got, then you dictate the terms."

It must be nice to be in a market with no competitors. If I can't see/use your site in my browser, I'll go to your competitor. How is this a win for you?

I have to argue against one thing you said, "We have to let go of typography". This is just plain wrong, typography is about reinforcing and supporting the meaning of text, it's not about using lots of fonts. If you use more than one typeface on a page, you'd better have a damn good reason for it. A good typographical layout can survive being viewed in a different typeface from the one intended.

Most of the sites featured on CSS Vault are examples of superb typography. This movement towards treating web design as a craft is good, and has given typography a new lease of life. Typography has always been an adaptive craft, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it will further adapt to the new medium.

"We have to let go of fonts" is probably more correct...

If you didn't care about accessibility, why is your page in liquid CSS? Love the two errors on the page.

You suck. Anyone who says he has the answer to anything, sucks. Unless, of course, they become famous for saying they have the answer. You are not famous for anything, therefore you suck. There are no rules, so stop trying to make them.

My, how quickly things devolve...

For those of you mentioning errors, I sure would appreciate you telling me what they are. I don't put the same QA effort into my personal site than I do paying client work, so any help would be appreciated.

You make a good point Aegir. Even though current browser practice limits designers to maybe a half dozen typefaces, that doesn't mean we can neglect good typography. It just means we've got to work under even more rigorous constraint. We do, however, have to let go of *control* -- something that I've seen as being very difficult for designers coming from a print background. (Especially you, Mike...)

And finally, I'm truly sorry for sucking, Jack. I'll just have to make an effort to stop sharing what I've learned in the future.

Don't worry Jeff I don't think you suck. Appearentlly, Jack has some childhood issues still unresolved.

I was able to attend the Accessibility is for everyone session, and was interested in what you said.

My background is more technical. I do all the backend coding, however, you brought some interesting issues, and points that made be think alittle harder about how the backend was coded. Also, how that would affect the frontend from a web standards or accessibility POV.

Love the idea that accessibility just falls out of good design. If only it were true.

I moderated the panel that you dashed madly into. It was a dramatic entrance and a splendid presentation - thanks all around! But about your central thesis....I think instead it's one of those seductive things that is ALMOST true. What is absolutely true is that if you use solid design techniques you will be able to get to accessibility much more easily with considerably less pain and frustration.

However, unless and until you gauge the user experience with real people with real disabilities...well, you just don't know if your hitting the mark of accessibility now, do you?

Thanks Sharron, I really enjoyed the panel ... once I caught my breath.

Your point is well taken, and I completely agree. In fact, I would suggest that *every* well-established site schedule a periodic round of accessibility usability sessions. But realistically, few can.

And I would add that not only does designing for the Web natively make it easier to incorporate accessibility, but it makes it possible. To me, accessibility as an afterthought is equivalent to a redesign from scratch.

I recently tried to use a screen reader out of curiosity and it really gave me a new prospective on the what this must be like.

What a pain!

But as I recently wrote on my blog, I think that businesses are really missing out on millions of people who might be interested in listening to articles while they work, via a screen reader.

Good for advertising too, just put a little blub, like 'this article brought to you by veen.com', etc. It has a huge potential, like npr.org and other sites, as a new way to stream content, and all the while it could do wonders for improving the necessity of css and accessibility in a serious way within the community (just try using a screen reader on nytimes.com, good luck amigo!)

Jeffrey, I mentioned the specific errors in my comments above. Please reread them and you'll find the (multiple) complaints, which I laid out for you as plainly as I could.

Hallelujah Jeff, and long live inclusive design. Great to see a big guy like you (still) reminding others of these truths.

Accessibility is part of the web design toolbox, and adds to the overall lustre of the finished piece. But just because it's the newest crayon in the box, doesn't mean it's special. Conversely, just because it's hard to draw with doesn't mean it's a clumsy tool. It's just there to be used.

It's a no-brainer really, and way beyond the classic 'form follows function' debate. Designers are not Artists - they are craftspeople. They have a responsibility towards utility because that's what design is about. Designers get commisioned and paid to meet a need, Artists explore the unknown, unthinking of purpose or reward. There's a difference.

Accessibility is now part of the schematic to meet the needs of the internet. A given that is one of the newest end-functions underlying our craft. For this craft, design has now become visceral, not just visual.

Accessibility is essential, but it should be design created by invisible hands.

Jeff, I find your essay very interesting and I agree with you. You can't consider everything, you can't please everyone so the main thing is your inspiration and your talent.
Natalie http://astra-design.com

Interesting points and great information. I agree with the idea of approaching web design as a craft, but many things need be considered in order to achieve the balance necessary for a given project. I think it's become accepted practice that everybody uses MSIE these days, so designs tend to favor it. Then, you have to consider your audience, and how you plan to market the site. Broadband audience - you can use some graphics intensive pages; dialup you have to keep things limited. Search Engine marketing - you have to develop strong content and text links throughout the site; conventional marketing - you can get away with less real text content in favor of a graphical layout. All in all, I believe that there is a purist way of doing things, but there is also a realistic methodology. You can do things 100% right - standard font families, adherance to HTML/CSS standards 2 versions previous, etc. But sometimes, if you cheat just a little - do things in favor of a slightly newer browser, design in a way that works 100% for 90% of your site's audience and is acceptable for the other 10% - would no doubt create greater appeal among the 90% rather than providing a substandard solution simply because it will 'work' for all 100%

Is this stuff supposed to be rocket science? Much of the pontificating i see reminds me of of the early self-appointed web gurus.

Look, the bottom line is that all 'products' with the best user experience have one thing in common--an elegant and effective solution grounded by solid understanding of user needs and technical limitations.

HI my name is Jheyson an aerospacial engineer in the NAVY working full time. I've something to tell you...you know that from all this crazy dreaming things has come Alverth Einstein and Newton to the perfeccion of the science too. This story inspired me to work hard on my profession and It is true that everything that passes around make us to change this world. Keep going like that because that's what we need in this world. Crazy ideas with persistent people.