Ya i had to take a break, don’t ask “iMamoo taking a break?” Did you know a common mistake which people make, is not to take breaks. specially the performance oriented people like me should take breaks when they need. Taking a break is like changing the oil on your car. It is a basic need and your performance will suffer if you decide to just “press on through.” Let’s say you normally operate at 70% to 90% of your potential, but when you get burn out, your capability drops to 20% to 30%. Simply trying to spend more time on the same thing reduced effectiveness, so does it make sense. You will be far better off to take some time off and come back at your normal 70% to 90%. You need breaks on different levels.

(Pottson, when he hear iMamoo say this, realized how much he had missed iMamoo and his talks. He geared up to hear about the W3C level 1 validation for web accessibility)

These guidelines explain how to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities.

The primary goal of these guidelines is to promote accessibility. However, following them will also make Web content more available to all users, whatever user agent they are using (e.g., desktop browser, voice browser, mobile phone, automobile-based personal computer, etc.) or constraints they may be operating under (e.g., noisy surroundings, under- or over-illuminated rooms, in a hands-free environment, etc.). Following these guidelines will also help people find information on the Web more quickly. These guidelines do not discourage content developers from using images, video, etc., but rather explain how to make multimedia content more accessible to a wide audience.

There are three levels :

1. Level A
2. Level AA
3. Level AAA

Below I have give level A checkpoint. If you implement all the three levels to your web page your site will become more user friendly.

Level A checkpoints :

1. Provide a text equivalent for every non-text element (e.g., via “alt”, “longdesc”, or in element content). This includes: images, graphical representations of text (including symbols), image map regions, animations (e.g., animated GIFs), applets and programmatic objects, ascii art, frames, scripts, images used as list bullets, spacers, graphical buttons, sounds (played with or without user interaction), stand-alone audio files, audio tracks of video, and video.
2. Ensure that all information conveyed with color is also available without color, for example from context or markup.
3. Clearly identify changes in the natural language of a document’s text and any text equivalents (e.g., captions).
4. Organize documents so they may be read without style sheets. For example, when an HTML document is rendered without associated style sheets, it must still be possible to read the document.
5. Ensure that equivalents for dynamic content are updated when the dynamic content changes.
6. Until user agents allow users to control flickering, avoid causing the screen to flicker.
7. Use the clearest and simplest language appropriate for a site’s content.

And if you use images and image maps

1. Provide redundant text links for each active region of a server-side image map.
2. Provide client-side image maps instead of server-side image maps except where the regions cannot be defined with an available geometric shape.

And if you use tables

1. For data tables, identify row and column headers.
2. For data tables that have two or more logical levels of row or column headers, use markup to associate data cells and header cells.

And if you use frames

1. Title each frame to facilitate frame identification and navigation.

And if you use applets and scripts

1. Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported. If this is not possible, provide equivalent information on an alternative accessible page.

And if you use multimedia

1. Until user agents can automatically read aloud the text equivalent of a visual track, provide an auditory description of the important information of the visual track of a multimedia presentation.
2. For any time-based multimedia presentation (e.g., a movie or animation), synchronize equivalent alternatives (e.g., captions or auditory descriptions of the visual track) with the presentation.

And if all else fails

1. If, after best efforts, you cannot create an accessible page, provide a link to an alternative page that uses W3C technologies, is accessible, has equivalent information (or functionality), and is updated as often as the inaccessible (original) page.

PS: iMamoo & Pottson are the two mascots of iPOTT SaiaS

courtesy:http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/checkpoint-list.html