Well, I have my reading cut out for me. Thanks for posting.

>>Note that by allowing a hyperlink inside another one

Wow! That makes perfect sense,but it's kind of crazy.

OT - in theory HTML 5 allows links to surround block elements (H1 + div + etc), but I have not found this to work well in browsers and when I look at it in Firebug, it renders as if I had multiple links around multiple elements. So I wouldn't count on the link within a link functionality working anytime too soon.

>>G5: Allowing users to complete an activity without any time limit

I don't think banks, Paypal, etc are ever going to allow that, at least not in the broadest sense. I suppose the imperative here is to stipulate that as long as the user keeps her session alive with some sort of key stroke or something, the session should not time out. And even though I have no real accessibility issues (colorblind), I do find that very often transactions time out on me, so meeting this guideline would improve things for many visitors as long as it can be done securely.

Pinning this to the top for now - good reference links.

Whether one is legally obliged to make a site accessible and usable by "all" or not, accessibility and usability is a very interesting and important topic.

W3C has gotten better and better at laying out "best practices" in a way that is applicable to a wider array of sites, and are suggesting quite basic implementations that can be adhered to by most.

In other words -- this is good stuff, and I wish more actually paid attention. Designing a site with usability and accessibility in mind tends to lay a good foundation for avoiding other issues.

I completely agree (I hope my comments didn't make it sound otherwise) - I think aside from perhaps a few edge cases, a website that is designed to be accessible to those with substantial accessibility hurdles, tends to also make it more usable to those of us who don't.

[edited by: ergophobe at 10:33 pm (utc) on Jul 18, 2013]

Oh, not at all! I just wanted to re-emphasize in a less blatant "me too" fashion :)

Considering I'm now someone relying on this accessibility and usability stuff I can tell you right now it's all a crock of crap unless you're completely blind. For us partially sighted people the accessibility is frustrating as hell.

RWD sites are the best as panning zoomed pages back and forth is seriously sucky.

The software that reads the pages sucks too.

Just hope none of you ever need it as it all needs a LOT of work.

Slightly off topic but there are no guidelines for apps and the magnifier in some versions of Android may or may not be in the phones or could be a vendor supplied or disabled thing. All I know is I'm screwed with a Samsung Galaxy S2 yet to get the latest updates and it's barely usable. Windows 8 isn't much better with only minor accessibility improvements over Win 7.