Developer feedback on "Techniques for Authoring Tool Accessibility" - 7.1

Hi All,

Last week I visited Allaire for the first time, and met many people I'd known so far only by email.

During my visit I met the complete Visual Tools Development team: the people who are creating HomeSite and its sister products ColdFusion Studio and (soon to come) JRun Studio. Together, we also visited the CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media where we were given a demonstration by a blind person of JAWS for Windows; this was extremely helpful in heightening our awareness of the difficulties met by people having to use such screen reader software, and also what types of things we'll have to tackle to make HomeSite (etc.) comply better to Guideline 7.

I've asked the team to give us feedback on Guideline 7 Techniques, in particular checkpoint 7.1, starting with "Following Standards". After all, this is what tools developers will have to work with to ensure compliance with guideline 7. The results are in, and my own initial impression that these points would need further clarification was largely confirmed. I'm attaching the result as a plain text document; individual items within each topic are numbered here for easier reference. ("Okay" means it's clear what to do.)

Cheers,

Marjolein Katsma
HomeSite Help - http://hshelp.com/
Bookstore for Webmasters - http://hshelp.com/bookstore/bookstore.html