Re: Authoring Tool Recommendations?

Hello,

I have used SoftQuad's HoTMetaL for the last three years.  It is extremely 
easy to use and includes some accessibility checks.  The checks are more 
stringent than WCAG 1.0, however, so I actually don't use them.  I just ran 
one of my pages through and received a summary of 16 inaccessible elements 
(yikes!?).  These messages seem to by in synch with an old version of the 
Unified Guidelines.  I claim the page conforms at the AAA level of WCAG 1.0.

Ben, the Webmaster here at Trace, uses HomeSite and TopStyle.   He says 
that there are not explicit accessibility checks that it performs but that 
"you can pretty easily customize the tag inspector feature to look for 
certain attributes within elements, validate for them, etc..."

It's going to be hard to recommend a tool that will create a nice layout 
without gunking it up with tables.  Although, Adobe's GoLive uses a table 
grid and seems to lay things out without needing to create a new table for 
each element (this statement is not based on extensive use).  I haven't 
played with the other WYSIWYG tools in a while...

At this point, the best recommendation may be to use a tool that produces 
clean HTML (like HoTMetaL, HomeSite, Amaya, etc.) and check accessibility 
with Bobby.

just fyi,
--w

At 08:30 PM 9/16/99 , Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>SoftQaud's HoTMetaL 5, Allaire's HomeSite, are two pieces of Software I have
>heard good reports about, although I have not been able to test them for
>myself. W3C's Amaya creates clean HTML, and as WYSIWYG editor's go it is not
>bad, although it is not very accessible itself at the moment. I use it, and
>it allows pretty well any accessible authoring practice, and provides clean
>valid HTML 4.0, which is nice. Othrewise, familiarity with HTML and a text
>editor that supports HTML (emacs, dreamweaver, cyberstudio, hotdog, and many
>other popular editing tools fall into this category) are a good idea.
>
>One of the reasons for the Authoring Tools group to try and review
>implementations is to e able to anser just such questions. I agree that it
>would be nice if there were easy answers. On the other hand, collecting these
>requests is going to assist developers in justifying the work to make their
>tools compliant, which will also help the situation.
>
>Charles McCN
>
>On Thu, 16 Sep 1999, Kynn Bartlett wrote:
>
>   I just got off the phone with one of the Deans of Orange Coast
>   College (a southern california junior college) -- if you've been
>   following Cynthia Waddell's posts on IG, you know that California
>   community colleges are required to attain at least level single A
>   compliance with the WCAG.
>
>   The chap who called me said that his technical people advised
>   against using FrontPage 98 because it didn't produce accessible
>   web pages -- and he wants to know what does.
>
>   I didn't have an answer.  I still don't have an answer.  The HTML
>   authoring tool industry should be ashamed of the fact that I don't
>   have an answer.  But at least this group is working toward that
>   goal.
>
>   I know that we will complete our guidelines, and I know that we
>   will be able to evaluate existing tools against our standards, and
>   I know we'll have a "what's okay and what's bad and what's better"
>   answer soon -- "soon" being on the order of several months.
>
>   Right now, though, Orange Coast College needs an answer -- they
>   want to do the right thing, they just want to know what that is.
>   They want to know which software they should start training their
>   instructors to use.
>
>   Anyone got an answer that's more useful than mine?  I mumbled something
>   about FrontPage being not quite as bad as it used to be, and about
>   Dreamweaver apparently being decent -- but I don't use a web editor
>   myself (all coded by hand or via perl script) so I have no direct
>   experience.
>
>   Thoughts?
>
>   --
>   Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                   http://www.kynn.com/
>   Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet      http://www.idyllmtn.com/
>   Catch the Web Accessibility Meme!                   http://aware.hwg.org/
>
>
>--Charles McCathieNevile            mailto:charles@w3.org
>phone: +1 617 258 0992   http://www.w3.org/People/Charles
>W3C Web Accessibility Initiative    http://www.w3.org/WAI
>MIT/LCS  -  545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139,  USA

wendy chisholm
human factors engineer
trace research and development center
university of wisconsin - madison, USA

Received on Wednesday, 22 September 1999 11:19:06 UTC