Re: Request for help on a project

James,

just some quick notes on the site - I haven't done a full review.

The HTML coding is not always valid, which can lead to strange effects on
some browsers. You can check your code at http://validator.w3.org - the W3C
validator service, which will tell you what is wrong There are also free
products available to help you fix the errors, including Dave Raggett's
"tidy" - http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy - and other editors that do a
good job.

Ther is extensive use of presentation markup, and of semantic markup (such as
blockquote) for presentation effects (in that case for indentation). I would
suggest that you use a CSS-friendly editor to get cleaner code that
transforms better.

You could improve your alt-text a bit - for a green bar there is no real
meaning being conveyde and you could use alt="" or alt="seperator". I was
also disappointed not to find a description of the castle on the page which
has the photo of it (because I checked without images, so couldn't get the
photo *sigh*)

An alternative approach would be to keep the framed version, and provide
decent alt text for the navigation buttons, basic navigation in the pages
themselves (at the bottom of hte page, for example) and have the navigation
links and introduction text in the noframes section of the frameset.

Finally, I am not sure why you link to a text-only version. I found no reason
why there needed to be a seperate version of the site - any problems could
easily be corrected on the main version.

Hope these comments are helpful. The accessible version is a big improvement
on the inaccessible version.

cheers

Charles McCN

On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, James Boyd wrote:

  Dear Sir/Madam
  
  My name is James Boyd, I am a final year student at The Nottingham Trent
  University, Nottingham, England.  As part of the course I am doing a
  dissertation based on Web accessibility for the disabled.
  
  One asspect of the project is to see how easy it is to implemet an
  accessible web site, from the prospective of a first time web designer.  I
  have no previous experience of web design myself, I have attempted to design
  a web site for a guesthouse using a number of accessibility resources
  including the WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and Bobby.
  
  Although I am not currently a member of your group I was hoping you would be able to help me.  At the moment I have been able to test the site using some evaluation tools, the problem have problem is I have no real means of assessing the sites accessibility from a user's prospective.  I was hoping with the groups experience in the field you could take a quick look at the site, and briefly give me your opinion on the site. 
  
  If you could help the sites address it http://www.boydie14.freeserve.co.uk .
  On the home page there are two links to two sites,  if you could look at the
  accessible version of the site and give me some feedback on its
  accessibility it would be very much appreciated.
  
  Yours Sincerely
  
  James Boyd
  
  
  

--
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053
Postal: GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001,  Australia

Received on Saturday, 25 March 2000 15:38:58 UTC