Accessible applications and scripts

• Accessibility of AJAX applications
  "While none of the technologies that comprise AJAX are new or groundbreaking, the increased popularity and awareness of AJAX development brings with it a need for developers to be aware of the accessibility implications these technologies bring."
  (Jared Smith, WebAIM)

• AJAX and accessibility
  "In this article we will have a look at the implications for accessibility and usability when using Javascript to dynamically update a web page. I will also show how you can increase accessibility for AJAX-based forms."
  (Peter Krantz, Standards Schmandards)

• AJAX and screen readers: when can it work?
  "We've all heard a great deal of buzz about AJAX in the last few months, and with this talk has come a legion of articles, tips, presentations and practical APIs designed to explore the possibilities and try to arrive at best-practice techniques. But, for all of the excitement and hype, still very little has been said on the subject of AJAX and accessibility."
  (James Edwards, Sitepoint)

• Building accessible widgets for the web
  "Building exciting interface behaviors is completely wrongheaded if doing so reduces accessibility. The interfaces we build ought to provide the same central functionality to all users, period."
  (Mike West, Digital Web Magazine)

• Creating accessible applications with RUP
  "This article briefly outlines an integrated approach for developing accessible software applications through use cases and personas that drive product development and dictate evaluation points for iterative testing. Embedding this approach into a proven process framework, such as RUP, is an ideal way to introduce it into a development organization. Eventually, RUP plug-ins could be developed to integrate elements of this approach into the standard RUP framework."
  (Gottfried Zimmerman & Gregg Vanderheiden, IBM)

• Creating accessible JavaScript
  JavaScript allows developers to add interaction and processing functionality to otherwise static web pages. Though commonly used, JavaScript introduces some very unique and challenging accessibility issues. This article presents an overview of JavaScript accessibility as well as advanced techniques and examples of how JavaScript can be used and made natively accessible.
  (WebAIM)

• Dynamic accessible web content roadmap
  "The Dynamic Accessible Web Content Roadmap addresses the accessibility of dynamic web content for people with disabilities. The roadmap outlines the technologies to map controls and events to accessibility APIs, including custom controls. The roadmap also outlines new navigation techniques to mark common web structues as menus, primary content, secondard content, banner information and other types of web structures. These new technoloiges can be used to improve the accessibility and usability of web resources by people with disabilities, without extensive modification to existing libraries of web resources."
  (Rich Schwerdtfeger, W3C)

• JavaScript events test, part 1
  " This is the first part of a series of articles investigating support for JavaScript events in popular screen readers. This article investigates the mouseover event."
  (Steve Faulkner, Juicy Studio)

• Making AJAX work with screen readers
  "The accessibility community is understandably concerned about the accessibility of client-side scripting, in particular using Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) to produce Rich Internet Applications. The Web Accessibility Initiative's Protocols and Formats working group directly address the issue of making rich Internet applications accessible, and we borrow some of their concepts to investigate methods of ensuring that Ajax applications work with leading assistive technology products. The bad news is that it isn't possible to make Ajax work in every known assistive technology, in the same way that it isn't possible to get Ajax to work with older browsers, but we explain the fundamental issues; how to inform users of assistive technology that a change has taken place, and how they can interact with the content. To illustrate our findings, we summarise the behaviour of popular screen readers."
  (Gez Lemon, Steve Faulkner, Juicy Studio)

• Making Twitter tweet - using the TPG notifier
  "I demonstrated a preferences module conceived by Hans Hillen, Gez Lemon and I, as a proof of concept(s) for ways to provide cues to users allowing them to benefit from and/or have access to content that changes dynamically without a page refresh. The TPG notifier includes 3 methods. Each method has its pros and cons. "
  (Steve Faulkner, The Paciello Group Blog)