Book Review: Web Accessibility Cookbook - Creating Inclusive Experiences by Manuel Matuzovic

My friend Manuel has sent me his latest book to review - and it is a corker. The best thing about this book is that it doesn't waste any time trying to convince you that Accessibility Is Good™. You're a professional web developer; you know that. Instead, it gets straight down to brass-tacks and gives you immediate and useful examples of what to do.

You could read the book linearly - but it is much more suited to dipping into. Want to know exactly how to do something? There's almost certainly a recipe in here for you. Within the first few minutes of reading, I'd already discovered some stuff I didn't know - for example, the <q> element changes its quote style based upon its parent's language.

It is, of course, a fully accessible ePub - with plenty of useful alt text and semantically-rich metadata. Even better, it is gorgeously formatted - with excellent use of colour and typesetting throughout.

I particularly like that every section ends with a "discussion". The accessibility world is one of compromises - he invites you to think about the choices you're making and their trade-offs.

Manuel is very generous with his links to sources. You'll find dozens of blog posts, articles, and tutorials written by amazing people. It is slightly annoying that all the links go through the https://oreil.ly/ link shortener. I guess it means they can be updated if the original link dies, but it would be nice to see the destination before clicking.

Like lots of O'Reilly books, it is priced firmly in the "professional development" bracket. So get your boss to buy you a copy!