We’ve been going through a lot of rounds of discussion about my book title lately. In the beginning, picking “The Accessible Web: Creating Content for Everyone” seemed pretty clear and to the point, but it hasn’t necessarily gotten the idea of the book out there very well for some potential readers.

I think part of the problem is that the title might not be explaining where we’re going well enough. When I say “creating content for everyone”, that’s exactly what I mean. The techniques that I cover in the book are targeted toward serving the audience of users with disabilities (and this is an important growing audience), but that’s not all they’re good for. If you want to reach audiences that use cell phones, PDAs, game consoles, or other “alternative” browsers, you need the same eye toward semantics, alternate access paths, and progressive enhancement that assistive technologies rely on.

I’m a little concerned that it might be more than missing the “for everyone” idea though. It could be the issue of writing about accessibility in general. Accessibility has a pretty bad reputation of being dull, dry, and unfriendly toward design and, if you listen to many “accessibility experts” this reputation seems well deserved. There is a better way though, and that is what I’m writing about. Well styled semantic markup lets us keep the doors open for more users and look good doing it. The question that remains is, how can we get past the stigma of accessibility in the title. My in-book titles like “Stoplights and Poison Apples”, “It’s Not Polite to Flash the Audience”, and “Layout and Other Bad Table Manners” better capture the spirit of the book that separates us from all of the bad things you’ve heard about accessibility in the past. The question is: how do we bring that up front in the book title.

Right now, we’ve been looking at “Designing Web Content for Users with Disabilities—36 Keys for Unlocking the Accessible Web”. If you like this new title, prefer the old one, or have a fantastic idea for the One True Title that is eluding us, hop onto the message board at Dave Thomas’ blog and give us some feedback.

Thanks,
Jeremy