The issue of rich media and accessibility has been raised many times on accessible.ie. Many of the same accessibility issues that blighted Flash and Shockwave content for years are now applicable to Ajax.
At present, sites built with Ajax are deemed inaccessible to any user using assistive technologies. Considering the work that was done to popularise the standards based approach, the fact that many sites are now deviating from it in order to offer dynamic, responsive content to users is worrying. Is there a middle ground that can be reached between best practice XHTML/CSS and Ajax-powered online applications? (more…)