Universal Design for Web Applications teaches you how to build websites that are more accessible to people with disabilities and explains why doing so is good business. It takes more work up front, but the potential payoff is huge — especially when mobile users need to access your sites.

You'll discover how to use standards-based web technologies — such as XHTML, CSS, and Ajax, along with video and Flash — to develop applications for a wide range of users and a variety of devices, including the mobile Web. You'll also learn specifics about this target audience, especially the key over-50 age group, whose use of the Web is rapidly growing.

With this book, you will: Learn the importance of metadata and how it affects images, headings, and other design elements Build forms that accommodate cell phones, screen readers, word prediction, and more Create designs using color and text that are effective in a variety of situations Construct tables that present information without spatial cues Design Ajax-driven social networking applications that people with disabilities can access Provide audio with transcriptions and video that includes captions and audio descriptions Discover assistive technology support for Rich Internet Application technologies such as Flash, Flex, and Silverlight

Universal Design for Web Applications provides you with a roadmap to help you design easy-to-maintain web applications that benefit a larger audience.

This book addresses the architectural principle of universal design as applied to the Web. It is built primarily on the framework of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) and the Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 produced by the World Wide Web Consortium, but it is not intended as a WCAG tutorial. There are separate chapters addressing JavaScript, Ajax and ARIA, and Rich Internet Applications in Flash, Flex, and Silverlight, but these chapters are optional. B&w screenshots are included. An appendix provides a table of cross references for universal design for web applications. Readers should be familiar with web page technology, particularly (X)HTML and CSS. The book will help developers and designers who want to build universal design practices into their work. The authors are affiliated with the World Wide Web Consortium. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

It looks terrible on my iPhone, though" "He never got the invitation - the app didn't like his browser." "Why is this site so hard to read?" You don't want to hear those complaints, and you definitely don't want management to hear them. Fortunately, you don't have to hear them, if you design your web site or application right from the outset. While it does take some extra preparation and care, doing it right from the outset can save costs and make new friends for your site in the long run. (Even fixing your site can stanch ongoing costs.)