In his article/post Supporting Standards that Support Accessibility, Joe Dolson examines the (non) relationship between web standards and web accessibility. He makes the excellent point that following web standards is not the same as providing web accessibility, although generally standards are beneficial. Joe discusses examples of where standards can actually make a negative impact on the accessibility of a web page, and where rarely used code can be beneficial.

Happy New Year! Dennis highlights and discusses numerous podcasts and news/blog events about web accessibility in the last year. Download Web Axe Episode 60 (2007 Year in Review)

• Podcast #56: Web Axe 2-Year Anniversary!
• Podcast #55: WCAG Samurai
• Podcast #52: REL Attribute
• Podcast #51: Option Groups (OptGroup)
• Podcast #50: Analysis of WCAG 2.0
• Podcast #47: Alternative Text in Detail
• Podcast #45: Accessible popup windows
• Podcast #40: About CAPTCHA and Accessibility

CNET TV is now captioning its Flash video using the DFXP caption support in Flash CS3. It's quite a slick implementation (select the CC icon). View Tech Predictions for 2008 for an example. This technique is mentioned in Web Axe's Podcast #53: Interview with Andrew Kirkpatrick, Adobe's leading accessibility guru.

If you haven't already heard, the W3C WAI is has announced the final review of WCAG 2.0. But before you submit your clever suggestions, be sure to review the WCAG 2.0 Documents. Other folks blogging about the WCAG 2.0 final review:

• Jared Smith at WebAIM
• Andrew Kirkpatrick at Adobe
• Patrick Lauke at Accessify

Call me picky, but it sure bothers me when web page articles about web accessibility are not accessible themselves. Talk about bad credibility... For example, the article Web Accessibility. . . Making your Pages Friendly to People with Disabilities is dreadful. Just by glancing at the main text, several issues are apparent...