“In my work I don’t see accessibility as an issue. All sites should now be designed to take the needs of all users into account. I try to take a pragmatic approach to web accessibility rather than an academic one. I have been very lucky over the years to have worked with so many great clients and very few were initially been interested in accessibility, preferring to prioritise branding, style or their bottom line. I have had to learn that accessibility is no more or no less important than these other issues. This has given me a very different perspective on accessibility to those who work in other sectors and I’m not afraid to speak my mind when I come across sites where visual design has been comprimised by a utopian view that accessibility comes before other needs.
Accessibility is an integral part of the creative process and not an end in itself and you should always involve a creative designer somewhere within any project.
I do not hold with the view that accessibility is somehow divorced from design.
What are the stupidest things you hear or see people saying/claiming in the name of web accessibility. That accessibility involves absolutes. You ‘must’ use skip navigation, you must ‘never’ use Flash. A person’s ability is relative, disability is relative and therefore accessibility is also relative. Too often do I see people focussing on WCAG guidelines as if they were written on tablets of stone.
What matters in any process are the decisions that are taken during it and the thoughts behind those decisions. If you can demonstrate your thinking behind any accessibility decision, you can justify it As a designer my job is to create innovative solutions to my clients’needs and often this means developing new approaches. Working strictly within the guidelines can lead only to stagnation.
I have a strong belief that creative people are visual thinkers and need visual tools to help them understand technical matters such as XHTML or CSS.”
.::Andy Clarke (AKA Accessibility, the gloves come off)