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irBlog is an accessible blogging platform, created by Interesource when they couldn’t find one on the market to host their own accessibility blog. The accessibility problem with most blogging platforms is that, by definition, a great deal of control is exerted by the blogger, meaning that accessibility is variable at best. Frequently text can’t be resized, images don’t have alt tags, there’s no labelling on comments forms and there’s a lot of javascript (which can’t be read by some screen readers) – often even in the navigation. The text problem is crucial in such a text based medium. irBlog has text which can be resized and expands elegantly to fit, alt tags on all images, and web standards coding. To get round the problem of multiple links with the same name on the same page (a real problem for screen readers), irBlog gives each different link a unique label with the title element of the link.
All of irBlog reaches Priority 2 guidelines for accessibility – extremely impressive in a medium that is, by it’s nature, extremely difficult to control. It’s the most accessible blogging platform on the market by a long way and was built in direct response to a crucial gap in the market. I commend it for the Accessibility Award.
Kate Hulme
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