I'll just come right out and say it: Dr. John Slatin and Sharron Rush have written what is going to become an industry standard text for web accessibility.

The few other books on web accessibility have only certain strong points, or are overviews lacking concrete direction. Not so with Maximum Accessibility. Slatin & Rush present a comprehensive evaluation of the state of the industry in regard to web accessibility, a summary (perhaps the most comprehensive, yet readable, I've ever found) of U.S. and international law pertaining to accessibility for the disabled, and [perhaps the most compelling parts of the book] personal looks at disabled users' interactions using popular web sites to do everyday tasks. [A side note: congratulations to amazon.com for their willing paricipation in the book (including permission for many screenshots), and for being forthright in admitting when they could do things better for disabled users -- and then doing them. On the contrary: shame on the Salt Lake Winter Olympic Organizing Committee for being made aware of huge problems, admitting they knew about it, then refusing to return the authors' calls after they had promised to work with them, and finally refusing permission to use screenshots from their web site in the book.]

More than just presenting an overview, though, Slatin & Rush delve into the code behind the page presentation (something like Nielsen's "50 Web Pages Deconstructed" -- not surprising, since he wrote the foreward for Maximum Accssibility). They identify problems, explain *why* they are problems, demonstrate ways to fix (or improve) them, or, when things just can't be fixed, offer suggestions on ways to provide equivalent content that is accessible. In short, Maximum Accessibility is "one stop shopping" for improving the accessibility of web sites: from why, to where, to how, the information is in here, it's current, and it represents the best practices of a large segment of the technology industry.

A substantial portion of the population has at least some form of disability. A substantal number of them actively use the web. From a purely profit-driven motive, why would you want to exclude potential customers from your site? From a purely legal point of view, you may be required to provide accessibility, depending on your type of company or organization and the services you provide. From a purely moral standpoint, it's just the right thing to take some very simple steps to ensure your information is available to all. And from an egocentric/pragmatic viewpoint, well-constructed accessible web design generally makes the web experience better for everyone -- including you. Code the way you hope others would code for you -- or for your aging mom, or your disabled brother, or your child with a disability. Maximum Accessibility provides background and reasoning to address all these concerns, as well as practicable, "nuts & bolts" advice on how to fix problems - or code without problems to begin with.

I highly recommend Maximum Accessibility to *all* individuals and organizations involved with web content development, design, and management. It will be money very well spent. If you're in the industry, buy two and give one to your CIO! ;-)