How to, as well as What

	Some comments are attached below arising from our webmaster.
	The theme of his message is that as well as the guidelines
saying
	'what' needs doing, it would be helpful if advice were given on
'how'
	an accessible site can be developed (or an inaccessible site 
	updated to improve accessibility). This appears to be a
worthwhile
	addition.

	DaveP
	<inclusion>

> Hello,
> 
> I have been following the discussion since December and having
> experience of designing web pages for accessability, I welcome this
> document. I have 2 concerns for the document. 
> 
> 1 - It should emphasis that you CAN have a webpage that is accessable
> to all, by now the statement "If all else fails" should never apply.
> When producing a page there are many ways you can highlight
> information, for example using the OBJECT tag. If the accessable
> browser could read object tags then you can store information in cells
> or even "mark" cells in tables, the browser can then get a good idea
> of how the table is layed out and display it row by row or column by
> column depending on your data. 
> 
> <TABLE><TR><TD><OBJECT type = "r1c1a">Bob</OBJECT></TD><TD><OBJECT
> type = "r1c2b">Mark</OBJECT></TD></TR></TABLE> - 
> 
> Would display :
> 
> 
> Bob.
> 
> Mark. 
> 
> Not :
> 
> Bob  Mark.
> 
> There is the problem that if webmasters/companys read the document
> they may get the impression that it is a huge task and even trying you
> may find you have to duplicated information on pages. This will then
> cause the WAI author guidelines to be ignored because 
		a) They see it as a too small of a target audence to
worry about and 
		b) There would be allot of duplication thus meaning more
work/money so they won't take it up.
>  Really all this boils down to trying not to get people just ignoring
> the document because the perceived effort is more than the gain (I'm
> not one!!).     
> 
> 2 - The guidelines are very "do A and B" but don't give you "do A and
> B by prosses C". I agree with every tag that is included but with no
> EXAMPLE methods of quick,simple or easy replacements then it is just
> another guide to writing accessable HTML on a webmasters selve. To
> remedy this I would suggest a new section entitled "Prosesses to
> implement accessability changes to an existing website", within the
> section I would place existing solutions to improve websites.
> 
	E.g.

> (sub heading) PERL
> 
> The use of script languages are ideal, the examples in this section
> are produced using PERL. 
> 
> AUTOCHAN.PL
> AUTHOR: X
> 
> This will take a user specified directory read all the files and
> update the HTML within the files. It will only do this for HTM, HTML
> extensions. 
> 
> PERL SCRIPT.....
> 
----
James Dobson
WWW Developer
ITSSD, Peterborough
Tel  +44(0) 1733 375268 Fax +44 (0) 1733 375255
Email JDobson@rnib.org.uk

Received on Tuesday, 27 January 1998 03:30:30 UTC