Re: Accessibility checking summaries

Dear Folks,

[From an EMail from Mike Lam]

Be aware that I'm having mail troubles with one of my EMail accounts at the
moment. I am copying the lists directly [a little bit of background - some
changes to Tidy were proposed recently, to add more accessibility checking
- Mike is currently cleaning up the code and error msgs, after various
private discussions between him, myself and Chris Ridpath].

>I'm currently updating the error/warning messages, so that they are more
>clear.  They appear to be very vague in some cases, and I'm working to
>improve on that.
>
>With regards to the summaries, we think that it would be best if we
>incorporated these summaries for each error/warning into a separate html
>file, that could be included in the tidy package.  This way, the user can
>simply review the errors/warnings , and then use the html document as an
>index for error correction.  And this would also make the output of tidy
>shorter, cleaner, and more simplified for the user.
>
>What is your opinion with regards to these issues?  Could you send an
>email to the tidy list, and see what everyone else's opinion is as well?
>

Hmmm. I would agree with the principle of keeping the output (and code
size) of Tidy shorter (smaller). On the other hand, the existing
(non-accessibility checking) Tidy summary works reasonably well, and can't
be lost like a separate HTML file.

I had another idea, not specific to accessibility checking, even before you
wrote this EMail, that might make even more sense to look at now. But
definitely something that needs the opinions of others on the list.

Specifically, either by default, or through an option (which I think I
would prefer), the error output (stderr) produced by Tidy, would be created
as (X)HTML rather than plain ASCII text. I might even go so far as to say
that this error output may not even have to be complete/valid HTML. What I
am really looking for is outputting URLs (pointing to error summaries, tips
etc) as HTML links.

e.g. (I don't know how this will look like in your mail client)

line 63 column 26 - <A HREF="access_errors.html#59">Warning [59]:
&lt;img&gt; missing descriptive text (longdesc/dlink).</A>

Then in any web browser etc, clicking on the link will take you to the
appropriate summary (in the local file "access_errors.html") :

[59] : Priority 1
All images require text equivalents, but 'alt' text must also meet certain
criteria, otherwise it may be considered suspicious. For example, 'alt' text
may be considered unacceptable if image filenames and/or image file
extensions (i.e. alt='xmas_tree.gif') are used instead of an actual text
equivalent.


Everyone's thoughts on the matter?

Regards, Terry

Received on Thursday, 29 November 2001 05:10:22 UTC