Re: Template for Accessible Web Page

On Mon, 24 Mar 2008, Matt Morgan-May wrote:

> You've outlined a number of issues, some of which I can agree with. One of
> them is a critical flaw. I don't think the site in question is exemplary of
> modern accessible design practices, and for that reason I've asked that it
> be updated or removed from the site.
>
> However, I can't help but notice that your concerns are mostly about
> validation, and that your testing tool is the text browser Lynx, and not any
> real-world assistive technology. There's more to it than semantics and

LYNX IS REAL WORLD assistive tech, if you have a screen reader it
works best in an all text setting.  why do you have to force fit a
solution to an artificial problem, if it cascades gracefully to plain
text it will almost always work.

> validation, and the templates that I've tested, with the exceptions noted
> below, work fine with assistive technology.

uh, how do you define assistive technology, is not EMACSPEAK running
on linux a valid assistive technology????


the rest of the e-mail is tilting at artificial windmills.

excuse my rant but the world is NOT exclusively windows and jaws.

Bob

>
> On 3/24/08 11:03 AM, "David Dorward" <david@dorward.me.uk> wrote:
> > * XHTML in a world with Internet Explorer
>
> [MM] Not an accessibility issue.
>
> > * Transitional (when the differences between Transitional and Strict
> > are tiny other that the addition of things which violate WCAG)
>
> [MM] This also has nothing to do with accessibility.
>
> > * No XML prolog (required if not UTF-8) but a claim that it is
> > ISO-8859-1
>
> [MM] This is required for standards mode in IE 6.
>
> > * Navigation implemented as a select element ... and dependant on
> > JavaScript
>
> [MM] Yes, this is an issue, and I will see that it is resolved.
>
> > * JavaScript commented out. This was encouraged in HTML 4.x to
> > protect pre-HTML 3.2. In XML, however, it is an actual comment. This
> > causes the document to depend on being served as text/html rather
> > then application/xhtml+xml (which the specification says it SHOULD be
> > served as).
>
> [MM] Not an issue since, as you mentioned, it doesn't have the XML prolog,
> and is XHTML Transitional.
>
> > * Lack of label elements
>
> [MM] Yes, this is also an issue.
>
> > * Invalid
>
> [MM] Yes, there are some bullets missing alt text, and that shouldn't be,
> though in reality it doesn't affect the overall accessibility. But do
> superfluous attributes here and there really make a document inaccessible?
> Be careful of your answer:
>
> http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fdorward.me.uk%2F
>
> > * ASCII art used to separate list items ... no li elements in
> > evidence on some lists.
>
> [MM] Now you're really overreaching. A pipe is not "ASCII art". As most of
> us know by now, printable characters between adjacent links were specified
> in WCAG 1 checkpoint 10.5.
>
> > * ALL CAPS used instead of CSS. IIRC, this causes some screen readers
> > to spell the word out as an abbreviation.
>
> [MM] Yes, also an issue, but mostly an inconvenience. And in JAWS 8, at
> least, it does read correctly.
>
> -
> m
>
>

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Received on Monday, 24 March 2008 23:49:19 UTC