Re: Prototype Accessibility Proxy (RE: Accessibility Proxy seeks interested ISPs)

Hi Nick,

is it possible to point the browser directly at it and have it rewrite links
to point them to the proxy explicitly? (the tablin service does this as a way
of dealing with the proxying question)

cheers

Chaals

On Tue, 23 Apr 2002, Nick Kew wrote:



  Nick Kew

  Available for contract work - Programming, Unix, Networking, Markup, etc.

  On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, Nick Kew wrote:

  > On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, SHARPE, Ian wrote:
  > [chop]

  > That I'll take as a challenge!  I'm busy all day tomorrow and much of
  > Sunday, but I shall try and find some time for hacking it next week.

  OK, I've put up a prototype based on a days hacking with mod_xml.
  It's a demo of concept, and I still have lots of debugging to do,
  but it should nevertheless help improve many pages.  Comments will
  be welcome, especially from users of assistive technologies.

  What is does (bugs permitting:-)

  1. Normalises HTML by inserting all optional tags
  2. Strips deprecated presentational markup
  3. Linearises Frames

  I have a number of further ideas that remain TBD.

  What it explicitly doesn't do:

  1. It will refuse to serve any non-text data.  This is because I'm
     leaving a proxy wide open, and I *really* don't want it becoming
     anyone's gateway to porno-stuff!
  2. It only supports HTTP, not FTP, HTTPS, etc.
  3. There are no workarounds for broken servers or broken browsers.

  Known bugs:

  1. It is capable of generating invalid HTML
  2. It gets some relative URLs wrong (to be investigated tomorrow:-)


  How to test-drive it:

  Just set your HTTP proxy to http://valet.webthing.com:8000/ and browse -
  especially pages whose HTML markup presents accessibility problems.
  Let me know if it does (or doesn't) help.  Especially, let me know
  if it fails altogether.

  Note - setting your HTTP proxy may fail, if your ISP or network admin
  forces you to use their own proxy.  I can't do anything about that.

  > Heh!  OK, when I've put up a demo, you can show me how to accomplish
  > the same thing at the Client.  Oh, and if your solution requires
  > equipment that is going to cost over $100 up-front to the blind user -
  > many of whom are not rich - then that doesn't count!

  This is a first-pass demo of the idea.  Comments invited!



-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  phone: +61 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative     http://www.w3.org/WAI  fax: +33 4 92 38 78 22
Location: 21 Mitchell street FOOTSCRAY Vic 3011, Australia
(or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France)

Received on Tuesday, 23 April 2002 09:03:21 UTC