"Accessibility" has a reputation of being dull, dry, and unfriendly toward graphic design. But there is a better way: well-styled semantic markup that lets you provide the best results for all of your users. This book will help you provide images, video, Flash and PDF in an accessible way that looks great to your sighted users, but is still accessible to all users.

It's not a one-browser web anymore. You need to reach audiences that use cell phones, PDAs, game consoles, or other "alternative" browsers, as well as users with disabilities. Legal requirements for assistive technologies as well as a wide array of new browsing experiences means you need to concentrate on semantics, alternate access paths, and progressive enhancement.

Give your audience the power to interact with your content on their own terms. It's the right thing to do, and with a $100 billion a year market for accessible content, new laws and new technologies, you can't afford to ignore accessibility.

With this book, you'll learn basic principles and techniques for developing accessible HTML, audio, video, and multimedia content. In addition, you will understand how to apply the principles you learn in this book to new technologies when they emerge.

You'll learn how to:

Use best practices of accessibility to develop accessible web content

Build testing into projects to improve results and reduce costs

Create high quality alternative representations for your audience

Add accessibility features to external media like PDF and Flash

Negotiate the terrain of accessibility standards

Apply principles of accessiblity to new technologies as they emerge