Slightly Remarkable

Accessites is a web design showcase, but it’s not your average CSS gallery. It’s something so much more special. It’s akin to the Web Standards Awards, but on a stricter and, in my personal opinion, more organized level. Accessites has a mostly objective rating system for a web site’s accessibility, and design — the opinionated — takes the backseat for the most part. However, we are most interested in accessible and beautiful sites. We’re not just after great looking sites or highly accessible sites, we’re after accessible ones that look great. They are few and far between, but the accessible and beautiful are what we want. We hope this higher standard will cause web developers and designers alike to covet Accessites Awards, since only the most accessible and aesthetic sites will be accepted. By raising the bar, we will promote accessibility and good design — not just one or the other.

The mastermind behind this whole thing is Mike Cherim, the leader of the project. (Trust me, this guy’s chock-full of ideas.) He developed the idea, designed and implemented the site (using our Green Beast CMS, which all team members have separate logins for), and compiled the outstanding and talented team.

Oh yea, and as an example of Mike’s creativity, just look at the name, “Accessites.” It’s not just because it’s accessible + sites (though it lacks a third “s” for access-sites), but it’s also like a human race. We are the Accessites! It’s kind of like Israelites or something (but not so much like mosquito-bites). ;)

Some really cool things about this project…

• Tommy Olsson of Autistic Cuckoo fame is a part of Team Access.
• We’ve had some consulting and other help from Gez Lemon.
• If you don’t like the default stylesheet, I made an alternate one called Bloodstone (Mike helped me develop the name for it).
• The layout is elastic, so if you resize your font, the page’s width resizes. Very cool.
• You can subscribe to the main news feed OR the Showcase feed.
• We already have some sites featured in the Showcase.
• We have “Link to us” icons.

If you want to learn more about our Accessites project — to become a team member (we could really use some more help) or to submit your site — visit Accessites now!

Enjoy!