Accessibility and Responsibility

I’ve done some cleaning on this website. After reading Mark‘s articles: 30 days to a more accessible weblog (well, I’ve been reading this quite some time ago, but didn’t have the time to follow it closely), I’ve decided that this ‘accessibility thing’ should be applied here. It is my responsibility.

Make the website validated is one thing, but make it really accessible to all people is a more bigger thing.

So I follow the articles step by step (still on step 15 right now, this is really time consuming, but worth enough). Some I could apply on this website, some are unfortunately not, like my dropdown form navigation. So, I will do the best I could to make this website still have good accessibility while maintain the current look. (Maybe I will put hidden text link for those who couldn’t use the form navigation – later – put this in mind. Already done for the content and archives navigations, now working on the friends, respect and core navigations).

Why bother?

Because I am a web designer and if I don’t care about the user then who will? That is the kind of responsibility I hope all people who called themselves ‘web designers/developer/master/whatever’ will have in their mind and heart.

If you can’t accept this responsibility and keep whining about how hard to implement accessibility then I wish you go find another field of work. Create amazing posters, create superb multimedia presentation, create some wow special effects that will blow the audiences, there are many things you can do without accepting the responsibility to user.

Not that I am against using cutting-edge technology like Flash or whatever will come next years but know your user and respond to them should be your major concern. If you design website for showing how good you are with flash, go ahead create one, I will praise you if you are very good, honest. But please don’t put that kind of ego on your website project that involve other users.

Well, I rants long enough. I think you will get the picture. Until then… step 16, here I come… =)