Web standards showcases and galleries are closing right and left. The Weekly Standards is gone. Stylegala is for sale. Last month the Web Standards Awards closed up shop. Web standards are more accepted than they've ever been. The tide has begun to turn for CSS. But is this, as Simon Collison has said, "the end of an era...The galleries themselves are now little more than windows into a transitional era of web design"?
All right. I admit it. I am a computer spud. Day after day I slump in front of a computer, staring at a glowing LCD screen, sometimes not budging for hours at a time. Ergonomics for me mostly means shifting into a cross-legged position when slouching on my tailbone gets too uncomfortable. Needless to say, I'm suffering the inevitable consequences. My rear is expanding, my eye sight is going, and by the end of the day my posture resembles that of a hunchback.
Yes, that's right. Applause. And yes, that crunching sound is me, eating my own words.
I downloaded IE7 Beta this week and, cringing inwardly, viewed a new CSS template from my current project on it. Holy cow and by George!, it actually rendered my design correctly. You could have knocked me down with a feather. (I believe this will be a Cliche Day for me.)
Lately I've been having a lot of conversations about the Web 2.0, and I have to tell you that, as a designer, it's starting to make me nervous. Not that I don't like the theories and web applications that are being dubbed "Web 2.0." But I can't help giving a little sigh and muttering, "W-ell, here we go again..." Just when I was getting a teeny bit comfortable with my knowledge level, the web changed on me again. Ha! Comfort as a web designer? Perish the thought.
Most of these are fairly quick and easy steps you can take to increase the accessibility of your web site. Keep in mind that these are just a sample of accessibility recommendations. The resources below offer much more extensive information.
