Bookmarked:
Christian Heilmann lists and examines seven common accessibility mistakes:
- Believing in products without putting them to the test
- Taking too much responsibility: “We should help the client understand that when it comes to maintaining the product, accessibility is as much his responsibility as it is ours.”
- Planning only for the worst-case scenario: not designing for the lowest common denominator, “keeping alive the myth that accessible products have to be ugly and cumbersome”
- Sharing problems with the visitor: not turning our technical challenges into a burden for the visitor (e.g. CAPTCHAs)
- Trying to solve problems outside our area of experience (e.g. font resizing is a browser task, not a website task)
- Hiding or overriding accessibility/usability enhancements (usually for visual purity)
- Catering to your client—not their clients
That last one is almost the most important one: as a designer, I should primarily be serving the end users, not my client.