RE: HTML produced by non-experts

Dan, do you use braille readers or have access to them?  Can you provide a 
reference for a manufacturer?  Do you know how much they are and who makes 
them?

Obviously we do not have a braille reader and have tested all that we can 
on lynx and pwWebSpeak.  We are required to be compliant, but we lack all 
the tools to test.
We would like persons with disabilities to take a look at our web site and 
provide input -- we welcome cyber dogs to sniff our site and provide 
comments!  Our objective is to actually be compliant and respected versus 
just saying we are...if that makes sense!  We work at Department of Labor 
and our site is:
www.dol.gov/dol/esa/public/programs/dbra

We have a header on every page and while this is great for the visual 
browsers (Netscape, IE, etc) we have found it to be annoying in voice 
browsers.  Any comments?  Also made the buttons bigger to assist those with 
low vision.

How does "www.dol.gov" read on the braille reader? They use tables with a 
vertical nav bar on the left side.  I was going to do this, but switched to 
the horizontal, because blind readers have problems reading tables.

rob
202.208.7270

----------
From: 	David Poehlman
Sent: 	Sunday, May 17, 1998 8:27 AM
To: 	Charles McCathieNevile
Cc: 	WAI
Subject: 	Re: HTML produced by non-experts

I'd add an example here.  I taught people how to propperly mark up a
wordperfect document for producing propperly formatted grade ii braille
without knowing much if anything about braille, but found that the best
output was done by those who had taken some initiative and learned more
about braille.  I taught some braille basics and provided additional
material, but that was the result.


On Sun, 17 May 1998, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:

> The discussion has been prompted because 'someone's secretaries need to
> produce HTML, but don't know how to write HTML'.
>
> The simple answer is:
> Provide them with proper training, so they do know how to produce HTML.
> Most people can learn to produce basic HTML, and to understand why that
> is preferable for so many cases, in a few days. That is the bottom line
> cost - you cannot make strawberry jam from cow's manure, you have to buy
> strawberries.
>
> Charles McCathieNevile
>

Hands-On-Technolog(eye)s
touching the internet
voice: 1-(301) 949-7599
poehlman@clark.net
ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/poehlman
http://www.clark.net/pub/poehlman

Received on Monday, 18 May 1998 09:21:39 UTC