Re: FW: Accessibility evaluation for "after" template page

Hi Liam,

Thanks for these updates, it is uploaded:
 <http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/2005/Demo/after/>

Please find also some comments below:

Liam McGee wrote:
> 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.

Yes, I'm working on the foreground/background issue with the designer.


> I haven't tested this on anything beyond IE6 and FF1.5, so please let me 
> know asap if giving problems in anything else.

Looks good on Netscape 7.1. On Opera 8.51 the links in the main content area (center) do not have underlines. I'm sure Pasquale will be happy to test on Mac if he has time.


> 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...

CSS looks better now on the validator, I'll also ask my colleague Bert Bos (Mr CSS) to have a look at it.


> 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 :)

Actually, I vote for removing this whole link for several reasons. Mainly because the download "simulation" on the before pages didn't same to work too well, and we also don't want to turn this into a PDF accessibility exercise. This will also take care of the MB/PDF issues which I think are already addressed on the tables page. Do others agree?


> 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.

I agree about not going down the road of trying to flip the header order to make the "Welcome to Citylights" the first <h1>. It seems like a headache and not really a common practice.

I also like the idea of having the top banner as an <h1> that would read "Citylights, your access to the city". It could be invisible or simply using the ALT of the <img> as Steve suggests. I think it matches the visual experience more closely. However, I also see the counter argument and am open for discussion.


> 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?

This issue is probably a result of having such a small site without sub-menu items. However, a quick menu is a common problem on many Web sites and we do want to demonstrate it. Maybe this is an argument for a (invisible?) label that includes some description of the quick menu.


> 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 :-)

You've changed the "full story" ones too. I like it now much more now. As to the "Killer Bees" and "Onions", it is clearer now that these are external links.


> 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.

I think the headings of the top stories section should not be underlined and should also have a different color (maybe even text size/font (asking designer)). They are primarily headers and the (redundant) linking in the header is just to promote usability of the page.


Cheers,
  Shadi


-- 
Shadi Abou-Zahra     Web Accessibility Specialist for Europe | 
Chair & Staff Contact for the Evaluation and Repair Tools WG | 
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)           http://www.w3.org/ | 
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI),   http://www.w3.org/WAI/ | 
WAI-TIES Project,                http://www.w3.org/WAI/TIES/ | 
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Received on Monday, 13 February 2006 13:58:44 UTC