RE: Best practice

Great explanation.

At 10:46 AM 2000-04-13 -0400, Bruce Bailey wrote:
>Dear Lynn,
>
>Take a look at the page with Len's Wave tool.


http://www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/piat/wave/

Al
-- more quote
>
>You will notice a couple things right away:
>
>(1)  The ALT content needs to be beefed up a little.  Text browsers are
>never, for example, provided the information that they are on a "Jame Cook
>University" site!
>
>(2)  The default reading order is messed up.  The left hand title bar
>(inside a table) is okay, but you will need to mindful of how it
>linearlizes.  My impression is that this is a navigation bar and, since
>their is already a navigation bar at the top, this one belongs at the bottom
>of the page.  In any case, the main body content "strategic plan for..."
>needs have a stronger attachment to its heading "Strategic Plans".  To a
>screen reader, the page currently read like "Strategic Plan" is the header
>for the left hand menu bar!
>
>Currently, you have something like:
>
><TABLE>
><TR>
><TD> </TD>
><TH> [Main body heading] </TH>
><TD> [Left hand menu bar] </TD>
><TD> [Main body of text here] </TD>
></TR>
></TABLE>
>
>Which, to a screen reader or text browser, reads in the same order as it is
>written in the HTML code.  Keeping the visual presentation the same, and
>having the menu read last (the trickier choice in this case), the above
>should be coded as:
>
><TABLE>
><TR>
><TD> </TD>
><TD ROWSPAN=2> <TABLE> <TR> <TH> [Main body heading] </TH>
><TD> [Main body of text here] </TD> </TR> </TABLE> </TD>
></TR>
><TD> [Left hand menu bar] </TD>
></TR>
></TABLE>
>
>If you don't like the nested tables, you can do with out them (but you loose
>the ability to identify header cells):
>
><TABLE>
><TR>
><TD> </TD>
><TD ROWSPAN=2> [Main body heading] <BR>
>[Main body of text here] </TD>
></TR>
><TD> [Left hand menu bar] </TD>
></TR>
></TABLE>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On
>> Behalf Of Lynn Alford
>> Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2000 12:20 AM
>> To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
>> Subject: Best practice
>>
>>
>> Here at James Cook University, we are redeveloping our web site (isn't
>> everyone?)  The design preferred includes left-side navigation links.
>>
>> So my question for the group is what is the best way to implement such
>> links?  Have you found a particularly accessible site?  Should we
>> implement
>> in style sheets or as tables (I prefer style sheets, the info
>> tech guys are
>> arguing that doesn't cater for older browser.
>>
>> I'm playing around with this as an idea
>>
>> http://www.tld.jcu.edu.au/develop/jcuproto/asd_lynn/asdplan.html
>> (only page
>> redone with style sheets so far)
>>
>> Others think it should be more like http://www.jcu.edu.au/newsite/asd/
>> URL of accessible left-hand navigation sites are welcome.
>>
>> Lynn
>

Received on Thursday, 13 April 2000 13:38:55 UTC