RE: Web Authoring Tools that are Both Accessible and Produce Accessible Content

Dear Jerry,

I am delighted to hear that FP is accessible, even if the pages it produces
leave something to be desired.

One problem FP shares with most other graphical editors is that it will,
without warning, delete and/or reformat code you put in by hand.  There is
no satisfactory way to defeat this behavior.

Of course, a the whole point of such a tool is that one should NOT need to
know HTML!  I don't think it unreasonable that such a package be accessible,
nor is it unreasonable to expect such a tool to produce valid and minimally
accessible code!

It will probably be a few years before Microsoft offers such a product.

Have you tried Amaya?


> -----Original Message-----
> From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org]On
> Behalf Of Gerald G. Weichbrodt
> Sent: Monday, May 08, 2000 3:05 PM
> To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> Subject: 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 16:24:37 UTC