Web Authoring Tools that are Both Accessible and Produce Accessible Content

Since there's been some discussion recently about Microsoft FrontPage and
accessibility issues concerning the pages it produces, I thought I'd ask
whether there are any reasonably powerful web authoring packages that are
both accessible and produce accessible content as a matter of course.  I'm
totally blind and am currently using FrontPage 98.  I find that I have to
manually add images and their Alt content in the HTML view that FrontPage
provides, but a lot of the other stuff is pretty keyboard-friendly.  Also, I
like knowing that, if I get stuck in adding something in WYSIWYG mode or in
seeing just exactly what I've done, I can easily hit Control+PageDown and
have a look at the HTML source code.  This goes a good way towards making
FrontPage a decent package for a blind person.

I keep hearing about the great accessibility features of HotMetal, but I
haven't heard whether its interface is accessible for a blind person at this
time.  The last I heard it was much better at producing accessible pages
than at giving an accessible experience to the web author.

So, there we have packages that do the one task pretty well or the other
task pretty well.  What can a person with disabilities use that both aids in
ease of use and produces accessible content?

Thanks,
Jerry Weichbrodt

Received on Monday, 8 May 2000 15:05:27 UTC