RE: Proposal for this fridays draft linking from Guidelines to techniques

David MacDonald wrote a proposal for this fridays draft linking from
Guidelines to techniques:
http://www.eramp.com/david/links-from-wcag3e.html 

Although I understand the many constraints within which you have to work, I
think there are problems with your suggestion. I can live with using your
proposal for our next public draft but do want to mention these problems.

I think the extra box draws too much attention to the links to the checklist
and techniques so it seems like that's the main content. I know they didn't
get enough attention in WCAG 1 but this might be too much. 

The blue background of the box with the links still makes it look like it's
part of the normative section (Checked with IE 6/WinXP) which isn't what we
want I think. Perhaps a white background would make it more clear that it's
non-normative although that would make it stand out even more. 
 
I also wonder about the contrast. Is there enough contrast between the green
or blue hyperlinks and the blue background? In greyscale the green
hyperlinks seem harder to read than the rest of the text, although I didn't
use any algorithms to calculate the contrast exactly so it's just my
interpretation.
 
I don't know how definite this proposal is, but there are some HTML problems
as well. You skipped <h1> but I guess that will be fixed once you put this
section in place. You also used the same ID for each div with the new links,
which isn't valid HTML and could produce unpredictable results. 

For each success criteria, you used different link text to refer to the
checklist for that SC and the techniques for that SC. I understand why this
is necessary (otherwise you would have the same link text refer to different
targets which can be confusing for people with visual impairments). However,
it does make it less obvious that they're in fact all the same types of
links. Would icons help to clarify this? For example, a graphical checkbox
to go with the link to the checklists and a toolbox to go with the
techniques? It would make it easier to understand that the links all serve
the same purpose. We could use them together with link text, or instead of
(with the current link text in the ALT). I think using icons only would help
people with cognitive disabilities because it's visual and reduces the bulk
of information displayed. 

Yvette Hoitink
Heritas, Enschede, the Netherlands
E-mail: y.p.hoitink@heritas.nl
WWW: http://www.heritas.nl

Received on Friday, 23 July 2004 05:17:42 UTC