I'm off to the BlogHer conference today, both to enjoy the conference and to give a presentation about making your blog more accessible. I met law blogger J. Craig Williams after I gave a similar presentation last year. Craig is a blogger with some serious technical muscle behind his law blog, May It Please The Court. He also stands out as a blogger who has given serious thought to accessibility as his blog has developed.
Thanks to Craig for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer some of my questions about his blog's target audience, why he has made accessibility a priority, and what features have been incorporated into his blog to make it more accessible.
Here we go.
Craig, how would you describe your blog?
May It Please The Court (MIPTC) focuses mainly on current legal cases of interest to the firm's clients and potential clients - especially cases within the areas where our firm practices law. I also cover the occasional oddball case or legal event that seems interesting. I find if the subject interests me, it seems to likewise interest my readers, at least so far.
MIPTC also includes a weekly, half-hour podcast of "Lawyer 2 Lawyer," an Internet radio show I do on the Legal Talk Network with another lawyer in Massachusetts, Bob Ambrogi. We cover current legal news and usually have three or so guests on the show.
Can you tell me a little bit about how your blogging intersects with your law practice? (Aside from not leaving you a lot of spare time!)
Blogging about legal cases requires that I read those decisions as they come out, which has the effect of making me better informed about current legal developments than I was before I started blogging. It's been a real boon to my continuing education, and I'm more tuned in to current events, as well, given all the reading I do on the Internet.
How much do you know about who reads your blog? Who do you imagine as your audience?
I have poured over the stats, which report a significant amount of information, even allowing me to drill down to the identity of an individual computer accessing the site. MIPTC surprisingly has readers from all over the world, with many from European countries, Russia, Asia, South America and Australia, although the great majority are from the United States. As just one example of its reach, on a recent trip to Australia, I was surprised to run into one of my readers who spotted me from having seen my photo on MIPTC. My readers include many business owners, other lawyers, judges, justices, law clerks, legislators, law professors and students and even Supreme Court law clerks.
Unlike newspapers who tend to write assuming its readers have a third to sixth grade level of education, I write to readers who are educated and well-read, but even then I try to write in plain English. Other than what my stats reveal, I imagine my audience as well-informed, smart, and as those who enjoy a wry sense of humor, with a bit of sarcasm thrown in.
When I met you at the BlogHer conference in 2006, you were already an accessibility convert. How did you become interested in making your blog accessible?
As a lawyer I'm well aware of the Americans with Disabilities Act and its requirements. Our law firm has represented companies sued by differently-abled individuals to gain compliance with the Act. It seemed not much of a stretch that websites, and especially blogs, should be accessible to everyone.
For MIPTC, it all got started when one of my readers wrote a letter asking me to make MIPTC easier to read. He wanted us to use a larger font so he could see it - he complained that the font we were using was too small. We complied and saw that we could make other changes to make MIPTC easier to read for everyone. Personally, I really enjoy the font sizer option we added. Even I don't have to wear bifocals to read it now.
When I set about making these changes, it was really hard to find guidance on the Internet, and it still is. There are not very many resources out there to inexpensively find out what to do to make websites more accessible.
Can you tell us a little bit about the features you've incorporated into your site that make it more accessible?
We added a mechanism to allow readers to skip past all the visual links on the top left side of the page and get right to the post in the middle.
There's a font sizer that allows the reader to change the font up and down in size, and the font we use is scalable.
MIPTC also has a text-only site without any graphics.
We instituted a color scheme that makes links different colors than the text, and then after clicking on a link it changes to a color closer to the text so you can see what you've clicked on.
Although we have some red on our site, we picked a version of it that someone who is color blind can see.
We have translation links that allow others who speak a different language to easily translate the entire site.
We set links to open new windows so those with sight difficulties know how to return to the original page they were reading.
Although I'm not always good at it, I try to identify links for those who may be listening to the site using a reader. I'm sure there are others that I'm forgetting because they're hidden in the formatting, but we're always open to changing the site to improving it.
What do you see as the benefits of making your blog's design more accessible?
It makes MIPTC easier to read and navigate, and shows respect for not only the law, but also those most affected by it.
Your blog is a team effort, including some designers and developers. How do you work with these folks to make sure the design and features meet your goals?
Everyone agrees that it's important for the site to be accessible to everyone, so we work as a team to ensure it works. Everyone contributes and makes suggestions because we all have the same goal. We've even changed our business cards to include Braille.
There are two other blogs affiliated with your law practice. Are you the blogging instigator?
More than likely, but in Justice Bedsworth's case he's been writing his A Criminal Waste Of Space column for about 20 years. I just got his permission to put it into a blog format. Joe McFaul of our firm writes the other site, Sharks In The Water, and he had blogging independently before he joined WLF. He was just shocked when we offered to allow him to blog under the firm's name - his previous firm didn't even know he was blogging.
On the other hand, some law firms treat it quite differently. A large firm recently contacted me and asked to provide some guidance to their blogging committee on how to write a blog. I politely declined and suggested instead they allow one lawyer to write it instead of a having a committee approve each post before uploading it. One writer seems to work for us and many others, and I really enjoy blogs that have multiple contributors.
Thanks once again to Craig for taking time to answer my questions. For more from Craig, visit May It Please The Court. Lately he's blogged about real estate, the EPA, mental health issues in the law profession, David Beckham, and sex in Second Life, so even if you don't usually read law blogs I'm sure you'll find something of interest!
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