This series is entitled “30 days to a more accessible weblog”, and it will answer two questions. The first question is “Why should I make my weblog more accessible?” If you do not have a weblog, this series is not for you. The second question is “How can I make my weblog more accessible?” If you are not convinced by the first answer, you will not be interested in the second.

Over the past five days, I have presented character sketches of five people: Jackie, Michael, Bill, Lillian, and Marcus. These people have several things in common:

  1. They all have a combination of physical, mental, and technological disabilities which make it more difficult to use the Internet.
  2. Although fictitious, they all represent real people with disabilities, and they use the Internet in ways that real people with disabilities use the Internet.
  3. They all have difficulty reading your weblog.

Starting Monday, and over the next five weeks, I will present tips that you can immediately apply to your own weblog template to make it more accessible. Although these concepts apply to all web sites, I will be focusing on implementation using popular weblogging tools.

Each day will focus on a single tip, explain the reasoning behind it, and show who will benefit once you implement it. That was the purpose of the character sketches, to change the question from “Why should I bother?” to “Who benefits?” Answer: “Marcus benefits.” “How does Marcus benefit?” “Well, let’s look at that…” And so forth.

Don’t panic if are not an HTML expert. Don’t panic if you picked your template out of a list on your first day of blogging and have never touched it since. I am not here to tell you that you need to radically redesign your weblog from scratch, rip out all your nested tables, and convert to XHTML and CSS. This is about taking what you have and making it better in small but important ways. Jackie, Michael, Bill, Lillian, and Marcus will thank you for your attention.

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