How to Make Silverlight Applications Accessible

A new Silverlight Quickstart provides you with the steps to take to make your application Accessible. You can make your application open for those with disabilities or impairments, including limitations in mobility, vision, color perception, hearing, speech, cognition, and literacy.

Some applications have accessibility requirements imposed by law, but it is a good idea to address these issues regardless of legal requirements in order to ensure that your applications have the largest possible audience.

The quick start shows how you can address these needs by providing:

• Support for keyboard interactions and screen readers.
• Support for user customizations such as font, size, color, and high-contrast settings.
• Alternatives or supplements for parts of your UI.

See Making Silverlight Applications Accessible on the Silverlight Developer Site.

Getting Started with Silverlight

You can get Silverlight and all the developer tools, access to How Do I videos, and Quick Start Tutorials from Get Started with Silverlight. Also see how you can develop for Windows Phone and Nokia Symbian.

See Silverlight Training Course (Silverlight 4) on Channel 9.

If your application is for Windows Azure, Windows Phone, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows 7, you can get additional assistance and marketing benefits by signing up for Microsoft Platform Ready.

Bruce D. KyleISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation