photo credit: Rhian vK

If you have been following the latest news in accessibility and retail, then you’ve heard of the lawsuit between the retail giant Target and blind users of the internet. Let’s say you wanted to to buy something online from Target. You could not, and more importantly, you would be discriminated against. All because Targets website is inaccessibly designed. But because of the lawsuit, the Target  that’s going to be changed. Target has been ordered by the courts to pay $6 million on the class action lawsuit against them.

Here’s a quote from the ruling:

“Furthermore, the settlement requires Target to implement internal guidelines to make its site more accessible to the blind by Feb. 28, 2009, with assistance from the NFB. The retailer and the NFB have agreed to a three-year relationship during which the advocacy group will keep testing the site to make sure it is accessible to the blind who use technologies such as screen-reading software. NFB said it will certify the site through its own certification program once the improvements are completed.”

photo credit: The Wandering Angel
This is great news for web standards, accessibility, and the many disabled and other users everywhere!

photo credit: kamaru

Too bad for the world. These marketers will continue to put out depreciated, non-semantic web sites. And they throw tons $$$ in SEO at them, and those sites spread (like cancer) throught the world wide INaccessible web. Who cares about the byproduct of using valid/semantic HTML anyway, if it doesn’t fit their bottom dollar? Well, I do. I care about that byproduct. Its accessibility. And it’s needed…

photo credit: Rhian vK

As I’ve covered previously, the two worlds being discussed in our topic are beginning to parallel like never before. SEO professionals are seeing the real benefits of created semantically correct, accessible websites. Accessibility experts are understanding that the use of SEO techniques are not always rooted in Black hat methodology, and with properly used keyword placements and other On-Page Optimization, they will be able to reach many more users than ever before.

So with that as our foundation, let’s look today at specific techniques that will allow the SEO’ers, Accessibility / Usability Designers, and Standards Evangelists to march to the same drummer. Yes, you can become a SEO’er yourself!

Not everyone who is working SEO are wearing Black Hats! What trend I was really referring to was the overall temperature of the SEO’rs I know. They’re growing cold on Black Hat, and Hot on Organics! Why do I say so? Because in the many SEO/web design/webmaster forums I’m a member of, I’ve seen the trend myself.

But what I wanted to blog about today is Plain Old Marketing. Plain Old Marketing (or Plain Old Advertising) is simply when a web master wants to sell a piece of website property to colleagues and other interested parties in the form of text links and ad banners. Sounds great! No problem! It’s the webmaster’s site, and as such, he/she should be able to do anything they want with it, right? Yes they can, but if they do, they face the Big Brother Google.

Not that I’m about to bash Google. As a matter of fact, they rank this site (as of June 30, ’07) #1 and #2 for the term “Plain Old Semantic HTML” (With Yahoo’s SERP at #4, and MSN’s SERP at #1 for that term). But if you’ve been where I’ve been on the ‘Net, then you know that many in the industry are up in arms at what Google has announced regarding selling text links on your sites. They even have a (crafty) link on Google’s Webmaster Tools titled, “Report paid links”.

Here’s an excerpt from the page that link goes to:

“We work hard to return the most relevant results for every search we conduct. To that end, we encourage site managers to make their content straightforward and easily understood by users and search engines alike. Unfortunately, not all websites have users’ best interests at heart. Some site owners attempt to “buy PageRankâ„¢” in the form of paid links to their sites”

Well, that sounds real cool, right? They’re concerned about their search results being most relevant for you, Great Internet User! But I have issue with this! Why? Why do I disagree with their efforts to stop paid links? I agree that it’s their index, so they can do whatever the heck they want to do with it. But for the typical web master who wants to earn a bit of cash from advertisers on his site by selling his internet real estate, that person can’t afford to do it, in fear of Big Brother Google clamping down on his efforts. What’s Google’s penalty for being snitched out on your paid links? They will remove your site from within their index!

But, and here’s my point…

Google themselves offers to help you get paid for links! If you sign up for a Google’s AdWord account , Google will place your ads on – guess what? – other sites that are relevant to yours that run Google’s AdSense! So, use their service, and you get to get paid for links. Not to use them will cost you plenty!

With the internet explosion most of the businesses are resorting to search engine marketing channels and email marketing for advertising their products and services to the global market. The search advertising is pursued by many buyers and sellers to find the relevant products. the marketing of their products and services costs the business men on the basis of pay per click advertising. Through link exchange system more and more products are put forward to the consumers to go for the best buy possible. The huge companies make their site the most visible for the internet buyers by getting the seo solutions installed for them.

Is the site’s navigation menu accessible via the keyboard, if our user has a motor skill disability? Can a color-blind user make out which is a link, and which is standard text? Can they see clearly the content’s text area, or is the color for foreground and background too simular in hue?

Once these questions are answered before the site goes live, and the site is marked up semantically correct, well…we’ve just helped a segment of our population enjoy our little piece of the internet!

WordPress does give access to it’s templates in full, so accessing it’s CSS/(X)HTML/PHP is downright easy. BUT, and I do mean but, I still prefer old fashion hand coding from scratch.

From my personal copy of Adobe Homesite 5.5 (or +, depending on whom you ask.) I create my new documents from HTML or XHTML – all from hand. I know some of you web geeks are feelin’ me right now! So my venture into the world of WordPress CMS is an experiment. Wish me well!