Re: Web Accessibility browser testsuite???

[ccing the UA list, the thread just start on EO]

> This may be being discussed in User Agent but has anyone thought to develop

The UA guidelines do not go to that level of details.

> a Web Accessibility test suite? As mentioned previously, the Mozilla team
> is working hard to implement things like the TITLE, ACCESSKEY, and TABINDEX
> attributes as well as elements like OPTGROUP, FIELDSET, and LEGEND. But
> they have no real basis for what they should look like. I'd like to suggest
> we take all of the accessibility issues mentioned in:
> http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/HTML4-access
> 
> and create a test suite. I will volunteer to create the pages but I need
> two bits of information:

What do you mean by a Test suite exactly ?

We cannot, in the time allocated anyway, describe a recommended UI for 
all these and other HTML elements/atttributes.

> 1) What the function of each attribute/element is. For instance, the
> FIELDSET element draws a box around a set of FORM fields and the LEGEND
> child element is the label imbedded at the start of the box's border. 

The funtion of these element is described in the HTML4 spec, you are
talking about a visual appearance of the element on mainstream
browser, which is different.

Drawing a box for FIELDSET looks fine with me, but I can't tell if
it's the best UI and in addition, we're talking about a default UI
here, as the user should be able to override the styling of FIELDSET
with CSS. I agree though that the default visual is important, as it
is what will promote the use of FIELDSET by authors everywhere (when
they see what it gives by default).

But it's hard for the WAI to come up with a recommendation here since
the target audience for these default UI is really the mainstream
viewer, not people with disabilities.

In short: I think the Mozilla folks should not seek the advices of the
WAI experts to design their new elements' UI, but the advices of
regular UI experts. What's good for us is that authors start using
these new elements, and that UA correctly implement CSS. With FIELDSET 
in the document and CSS in the browser, we're all set.

Received on Wednesday, 27 January 1999 06:03:55 UTC