Re: Summary of BAD TF teleconference on Tuesday 14 February, 2006

Shadi Abou-Zahra wrote:
> #1) Images of top stories as CSS (Panda, Violin, Brains)
> - These images usually do convey some content that is related to the 
> article. To demonstrate best practice in images and descriptions, we 
> will do the following:
> * Images in the (right) side bar will be assumed as purely decorative 
> and hence will remain as CSS images with no descriptions.
> * Images in the center top-stories section (Panda, Violin, Brains) will 
> be assumed informative and will be placed into the HTML with short 
> descriptions.

Done (see attached)

> #3) PDF leaflet needs an accessible version (or alternative)
> - This will be removed from the before and after page.

Changed this on the after version, Shadi to change from the before

> #4) Need explicitly associated label for the quick menu
> - An invisible <label> to describe the purpose of the quick menu should 
> be implemented as best practice. More over, the contents of the menu 
> should reflect the themes rather than repeat the left navigation bar 
> (e.g. "articles", "tickets", etc). This will be changed on both the 
> before and after pages because it is not really an accessibility issue.

Done. Please note that the server action for this needs writing. Shadi?

> #5) Document structure should start with <H1> level heading
> - An invisible <h1> with information such as "Citylights Home Page" 
> should be implemented. This heading should be the same as the document 
> title too.

Invisible headings are fine for you screen reader users, but annoying 
for us no-mouse Opera users who navigate visually by heading - you 
suddenly lose your focus, although you kn ow that *something* is there. 
I would still maintain that the page h1 should be the first heading of 
the main content, with the title giving site and page information.

Meta tags -- guess we could state that this is part of a collection, but 
I think this may confuse the issue between the example -- which should 
stand alone apart from the educational information around it -- and the 
presentation of the example.

> #6) CSS validation errors ("display: inline-block") and warnings  - 
> Seems like inline-block is a valid CSS 2.1 element. Shadi will look into 
> this.

I have my fingers crossed. The w3c css validator is throwing an error on 
inline-block. Can find mention of it in the working draft though. But it 
will confuse more adventurous users who validate is if the validator 
throws up a false negative. Can we get the validator upgraded if 
inline-block is valid to avoid any potential confusion?

> #7) Screen reader directions and options
> - Invisible list at the top of the page that describes the skip links to 
> screen reader users does not show in JAWS. The reason is the usage of 
> CSS "display: none". Need to implement this by left positioning out of 
> the view port. Also, these direction should come after the warning which 
> should always be the first element.

It *was* implemented as left-positioning out of the viewport, the 
display: none is for vision-no-mouse Opera users for whom skip links are 
at best redundant and at worst broken. It is overridden in the next line 
(using * html and :root to restrict the function to IE, Konqueror-based 
and Moz-based users, but this has worked for JAWS and WindowEyes in the 
past). The last time I implemented this (or at least a very similar 
version) it was on Jim Thatcher's site, and it *did* work for JAWS, or 
at least on the versions of JAWS we tested on (5.something - 5.45 sound 
familiar? and 6.0), and on Window Eyes (v4 I think). I have tried a 
couple of subtle changes to the implementation. Please retest, and if 
still not working, please check my original implementation on 
www.jimthatcher.com -- if that is working on your version of JAWS then I 
will replicate it exactly for here. It would be nice to know what 
exactly is upsetting JAWS though.

Tanguy, could you tell me the version of JAWS you are using, and 
describe the behaviour to me, if still not working, step by step?

Other changes:
1) Shadi, I have changed the warning text very slightly (the addition of 
'a' and 'an' to the second sentence).
2) Would suggest reviewing the section title 'Facts' given it is now a 
concert ticket page.

Thanks all

Liam

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