W3C Core Style Sheets Review

        Reply to:   W3C Core Style Sheets Review


At Judy Brewer's request, I tested the W3C's core style sheet examples using various screen readers and browsers.  Below are my comments.  Please note that this is not a review of the browsers' support of style sheets; rather, it's an evaluation of how well my screen readers handled the content of the pages. 

Thanks.
Geoff Freed
Project Manager, Web Access Project
CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media
WGBH Educational Foundation
geoff_freed@wgbh.org

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Accessibility Evaluation of W3C Core Style Sheets (http://www.w3.org/StyleSheets/Core/preview)

Computers used in this evaluation:
-- Power Macintosh 4400/200; system 7.5.3
-- Gateway 2000 Pentium; 200 Mhz; Windows 95

Browsers used:
-- IE 4 (Mac and PC)
-- Netscape Communicator (Mac and PC)
-- MacLynx (Mac)

Screen readers used:
-- outSPOKEN (Mac)
-- JAWS 3.0 (PC)

The good news is, I was able to read just about everything properly using JAWS and outSPOKEN, with two exceptions:

1.  outSPOKEN does not recognize radio buttons.  Thus, I was unable to choose any of the style sheets unless I used the mouse.  I think this is a particularly serious problem that should be corrected.  JAWS, on the other hand, did not have a problem recognizing the radio buttons.

2.  On the "HTML Elements Sampler" page, the following paragraph is used to illustrate examples of superscript and subscript:

"This is big. This is small. This is SAMP. This is sub. This is sup. This is S. This is strike, etc." 

"This is sub" appears below the line as subscript; "this is sup" appears above the line as superscript.  Using IE4 with outSPOKEN for the Mac, I was able to read all this text as a single line.  However, Communicator for the Mac displayed the super- and subscript far enough above and below the main text line that outSPOKEN interpreted them as separate lines of text, which was slightly confusing.  On the PC, JAWS interpreted this example as two lines of text in both Communicator and IE4.  

Finally, using MacLynx with outSPOKEN, I was able to access every page as well as the radio buttons.  Links were shown in bold, and emphasis of all kinds was shown as underlined text.  Subscript, superscript, acronym and strikethrough were unavailable.

Received on Monday, 6 July 1998 14:50:25 UTC