[Fwd: Re: FW: Accessibility evaluation for "after" template page]

Forwarding to correct list address...


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: FW: Accessibility evaluation for "after" template page
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 13:10:05 +0000
From: Liam McGee <liam.mcgee@communis.co.uk>
Organization: Communis Ltd
To: BAD TF <public-wai-eo-badtf-request@w3.org>
CC: shadi Abou-Zahra <shadi@w3.org>
References: <00a201c6305b$ab81de50$3a1610ac@NILSHP0044>

Steven Faulkner wrote:
> I have uploaded a zipped version of the comments document as my original
> email didn't appear on the mailing list.
> 
> accessibility comments doc. http://www.sf.id.au/badtf/bad-tf-comments.zip

Shadi -- I haven't done anything about link and hover colours with the 
template yet as it's something that needs to come from the graphic 
designer. Please advise.

Now for Steve's comments -- thanks Steve! These made me think harder 
about providing less hacky, more semantically elegant solutions to the 
'is it a background or is it content' image issue. The method I had used 
(css bg of empty span in a div) was due to our cross-browser 
constraints, as Mozilla, reasonably, does not like giving heights to 
empty blocks (same for konqueror-based, I think). I like the idea of 
margining the h2 element appropriately and placing the image bottom, 
more semantically elegant for a start, but I have a feeling that this 
may mess up in Safari... something definitely used to have issues with 
right and bottom. May be be having a horrible flashback to IE4 or IE5.01 
though, so could be wrong, but if someone would have a look at the 
attached version in Safari 1.1 and 1.2 (and of course anything else 
handy) I'd be grateful. It's also a bit complicated because the 'C' in a 
square bullet is actually currently the background of the H2. Putting 
the C and the photo as the background is no good because increasing the 
text size will  result in text overlapping the image... so I have set 
the anchor as a block level element and padded the bottom to 4em to 
allow space for the heading text (and for it to expand). This works on 
most text sizes, with a slight overlap on Largest in IE6. It is not 
pixel perfect with the original design though.
I haven't tested this on anything beyond IE6 and FF1.5, so please let me 
know asap if giving problems in anything else.

onfocus colour... damn, it's fine in IE6 on my machine (white on dark 
blue)... oops, thought has tested on others too. That'll teach me to 
mark-up late at night :-)
Have !important-ed the a:focus / a:active rules so should (hopefully) 
show up as white on dark blue for everything. I have darkened the blue a 
bit too, just for completeness...

Abbreviations. I actually find expanding abbreviations aesthetically 
annoying when using a screenreader, in cases where the abbreviations are 
more often used when speaking than their expanded equivalents, and 
therefore omitted on Mb, PDF etc. (though I usually browse with titles 
off in JAWS as that is what I find most users doing), but I agree that 
this does not follow the letter of the guidelines. But as we are doing 
that, do we need to expand PDF too? I'd argue not, but am happy to be 
shouted down :)

Headers, had tried for some sort of aesthetic equivalence of experience 
(screen reader vs visual) when considering header structure, hence the 
v0.3 structure, but as many users just read through all headers rather 
than by header number (unless you're using Window-eyes, I guess), I am 
ambivalent about how best to do it. Shifting the position in the code -- 
too many crossbrowser headaches with absolute positioning, I think. We'd 
be back to empty placeholder divs before we knew it. I am not keen on 
putting images as H1 -- seems to me that a site logo is not a page 
heading, any more than a masthead is a newspaper's main headline. So 
have gone for <strong> as the best option for the Traffic and Today 
sections, with H1 kept for the main content headline.

Quick menu and left hand menu redundancy. I don't think we can merge 
them without confusing our message of leaving a site looking the same 
after applying the accessibility improvements. I haven't' changed 
this... one for discussion?

Link text, quite right, but again we need to discuss the 'leave it 
looking as you found it' issue. I have changed the 'read more' ones for 
now as I hated them anyway :-)

Other questions: how do we feel about (redundant) links from headings 
not being underlined or coloured? Contrast right hand side headings with 
  main content news story headings.

Regards all

Liam

-- 
Liam McGee, Managing Director, Communis Ltd
www.communis.co.uk      +44 (0)1373 836 476


-- 
Shadi Abou-Zahra     Web Accessibility Specialist for Europe | 
Chair & Staff Contact for the Evaluation and Repair Tools WG | 
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WAI-TIES Project,                http://www.w3.org/WAI/TIES/ | 
Evaluation and Repair Tools WG,    http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/ | 
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