Re: Web Accessibility browser testsuite???

There's a test for image maps at

http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday/web_access/image_map.html

The user agent should make available the ALT text for the image itself,
inform the user that there is a series of ALT tag'd links, present those
links, and allow user to select any of them.

Also, for "extra credit", the user agent should 

1. at user's option, skip the ALT tags or go through them one by one.

2. give a keyboard shortcut method, e.g. initial or highlighted letter, to
select an item.  Especially useful for nav bars that are used frequently.

At this point I don't know of any browser that does all this, even without
the "extra credit" parts.


with JFW 3.2
Netscape doesn't show AREA tags.
There's no mode in which MSIE shows both the AREA ALT's and also the ALT
for the IMG.

Lynx 2.7.1 is not fully satisfactory either.  It gives all ALT tags, but
when the user encounters the link it just just looks like an ordinary link
which the user must select to get to the AREA alt tags.  Thus, it relies on
proper IMG ALT text for the image to hint at menu it leads to.  It would be
better for the browser to explicitly say that there is an "image map"  or
"menu" etc.  (I don't know what best words are for beginner).

I've been told, but have not personally verified, that 
pwWebSpeak
HomePageReader
emacspeak +w3 

give the ALT tags for individual AREA's but from the answers I got so far I
don't know they give the ALT text of the image itself.  

None of the browsers do the "extra credit" features.

Len

At 01:17 PM 1/26/99 -0500, B.K. DeLong wrote:
>This may be being discussed in User Agent but has anyone thought to develop
>a Web Accessibility test suite? As mentioned previously, the Mozilla team
>is working hard to implement things like the TITLE, ACCESSKEY, and TABINDEX
>attributes as well as elements like OPTGROUP, FIELDSET, and LEGEND. But
>they have no real basis for what they should look like. I'd like to suggest
>we take all of the accessibility issues mentioned in:
>http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/HTML4-access
>
>and create a test suite. I will volunteer to create the pages but I need
>two bits of information:
>
>1) What the function of each attribute/element is. For instance, the
>FIELDSET element draws a box around a set of FORM fields and the LEGEND
>child element is the label imbedded at the start of the box's border. 
>
>2) What, if any, browsers implement these attributes/elements correctly.
>For example, the above mentioned elements are rendered correctly in IE5b2.
>
>Please let me know what you think. Microsoft is starting to mention to
>various people that they are "freezing" the code for IE5b2 which means any
>feedback on bugs will soon be cut out of the next version. Netscape is
>working hard on implementing full HTML 4.0 but needs guidance on how
>certain attributes/elements should be implemented. Basically, I want to do
>this ASAP if I do this at all.
>--
>B.K. DeLong                  360 Huntington Ave.
>Director                         Suite 140CSC-305
>New England Chapter     Boston, MA 02115
>World Organization        (617) 247-3753
>of Webmasters
>
>http://www.world-webmasters.org
>bkdelong@naw.org
>
>
>
-------
Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
Universal Design Engineer, Institute on Disabilities/UAP, and
Adjunct Professor, Electrical Engineering
Temple University

Ritter Hall Annex, Room 423, Philadelphia, PA 19122
kasday@acm.org        
(215} 204-2247 (voice)
(800) 750-7428 (TTY)

Received on Tuesday, 26 January 1999 16:32:04 UTC