• Dan Cederholm suggests serving up an un-styled version of the site.
• Nathan Smith points out that there ought to be a polite way to help the user upgrade their browser.  This is accomplished through a meta refresh.
• The creators of IE6 Update encourage an update with something that looks like IE’s Information Bar.  It contains a link to the latest release of IE.  Since Microsoft has marketed their browser as “the Internet” the creators reason we shouldn’t feel bad about tricking the visitor into moving on to a better browser.
• http://www.bringdownie6.com/ appears to be the one of the nicest looking unified efforts to get people to do something to encourage user awareness of IE6’s shortcomings. I wouldn’t include their graphics on anyone’s homepage, but I included it here, and now I feel like I’ve done my part. IE6 users get the following message:

If you’re reading this, you’re surfing using Internet Explorer 6, an eight-year-old browser that cannot cope with the demands of the modern internet. For the best web experience, we strongly recommend upgrading to Firefox, Opera, Safari, Google Chrome, or a more recent version of Internet Explorer.

Education is powerful, and the unifying theme on all of these sites and posts is: making your audience aware there are better options available to then, they are more likely to change, especially if you help make the change easy.

An excellent article based on direct observation by Mary Theofanos and Janice Redish gives some great suggestions on how to improve accessibility.  Here is a partial summary of some of their ideas and a few of my own:

• Write for the web. Screen readers begin reading at the begining of a section.  Those who use them scan web pages auditorily like sighten users scan with their eyes.  Place keywords at the begining of a line of text so they your users have the most important information first.
• Build a page with proper XHTML structure. The wonderful thing about semantic coding is that it makes sense in a hierarchy and provides structural context.  Even though your page may display differently, your markup should reflect what is most important to your user.
• Use proper CSS techniques. CSS is allows designers the freedom to display a page the way they’d like it seen, but is also allows a user the same luxury.  By employing CSS best-practices, you can maximize a users experience by letting them “see” a page that makes sense for them.
• Use alternative text for all images. It always suprises me how many websites still don’t include alt text for images.  Crafting a perfect description for a complicated graphic may be a little tricky, but something is better than nothing.  If an image is purely decorative, it’s better to have an empty alt tag (i.e. alt=” “) so that the screen reader will ignore it.  Having appropriate alt text will improve your search engine ranking for images, which is reason enough to include it.
• Make content, especially forms, keyboard accessible. Tabbing through form fields is something a lot of people do. If you’ve ever watched a computer power user, they often don’t even touch their mouse, or they have one hand on the keyboard at all times.  Some people can’t use a mouse, so this one is very important.

As your tools to create web pages become more sophisticated, you’ll find that accessibility will be a more integrated part of your workflow.  Being aware of the big ticket items will help you move forward in your goal to create amazing work for a global audience.