We just finished the first session of BlogHer and it was quite interesting. I attended the ‘Pimp Your Blog’ session, and while I knew a lot of the information already, there was a bit on accessibility which was really interesting. Skye described accessibility as allowing people to recevie the same information, regardless of the channel. She went on to illustrate many of the common mistakes bloggers make that make their pages inaccessible to those with dissabilities, especially people who rely on a screen reader to read their webpages. For example – possibly the most easy to fix being where you put your sidebar and how you contextualize your links. Another important tip had to do with pictures. Because the readers often only read the ‘alt’ of a picture url, it is important to make it as descriptive as possible. Great tips, nice little handout, and a lesson worth repeating. I think it is time to make the HUMlab blog as accessible as possible.

cross posted from the HUMlab blog