RE: HTML produced by non-experts

forgot to mention that we use bobby...

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From: 	Taylor-Made
Sent: 	Monday, May 18, 1998 10:22 AM
To: 	Robert Neff
Subject: 	lRe: HTML produced by non-experts

Dear Rob,

Put your site through Bobby:  http://www.cast.org/bobby/bobby.htm

If you have any problems for accessibility, it will tell you how to fix
them.

Also putting it through W3C Validation helps with html, also.

http://validator.w3.org/

Hope this helps.
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Neff <rcn@fenix2.dol-esa.gov>
To: 'David Poehlman' <poehlman@clark.net>; 'WAI' <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Cc: 'Jamie Fox' <jfox@fenix2.dol-esa.gov>
Date: Monday, May 18, 1998 8:20 AM
Subject: 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

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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
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Received on Monday, 18 May 1998 10:34:21 UTC