Just in case you were not already aware, the wonderful accessibility resource AccessifyForum is six years old today. If it’s a while since you’ve been across, why not wander over and wish it a happy birthday. If you’ve not been across before but you’re interested in how to make websites accessible to users with disabilities (or even ‘accessibility off the web’), why not consider popping across to join?

It’s a lovely forum, and there is generally some metaphorical tea and biscuits on the go for new starters, although we do tend to take somewhat of a hard line on spammers (moderators have access to a pretty little ‘execute’ button, which removes spammers and their posts from the forum without much ceremony — although unfortunately the forum’s Daddy, Nigel Peck, has been unable to code this to execute the spammers themselves, so at present it is only the spammer accounts which are terminated).

I was thinking about this the other day as it represents quite a considerable part of my online footprint: I have at the time of writing, contributed 1,863 posts to AccessifyForum in four years (around 3% of the total posts) as producing over 1,100 blog posts in about the same time — and over 2,500 tweets since February this year. As far as AccessifyForum goes, I’m neither one of the long-termers (there are still active members from the 2003 start) nor one of the highest posters — three people have achieved over 3,000 posts each.

The forum has been very instrumental in improving my knowledge of accessibility: not just directly through posting and listening to responses given, but also indirectly through people linking to useful resources and also through other people asking questions which have made me think in trying to provide an answer.

I’d like therefore to take this opportunity to thank and celebrate AccessifyForum for all of the good it has done so far, to wish it every continued success in the future, and also to thank Nigel Peck for the work he has put into it. Jolly good work, that man.