make a start on designing a style which uses some fixed width and absolute dimension elements, ideally without too many compromises on screen-reader accessibility. I know a lot of people hate DW's selection of highly flexible, relative sized, div-based layouts, because they want to use graphics and make something pixel-perfect in any browser or resolution (including weird / proprietary / deprecated ones). I don't know if it's possible to have fixed width and accessibility at the same time, but I'm hoping to learn enough to start to tackle this issue

This is something I want to be able to do too. At least enough so that I can make custom-made fixed-with layouts for others.