guidelines

Thank you for your efforts. I think the revised guidelines are the
clearest we have seen. Still, I work with web authors who will not
understand large parts of those guidelines. I think their technical grasp
of HTML - which is a slight grasp, if at all - represents the growing
majority of web authors. I will continue to hope that WAI reaches out to
them by emphasizing the importance of sense and clarity. 

A few weeks ago, I gave my users an online tutorial on accessibility. I
will add a link to the guidelines along with my condensed version:

Make sure people can read and understand your site
1. Organize your site logically. If it works well in outline form, it
probably will work as a web site.
2. Write your text clearly. Get to the point but include enough
information to be useful. Most importantly, write link phrases that tell
visitors what to expect when they click.
3. Design your pages with purpose. Know why you have included any given
element and be sure that all elements work together for a common purpose.
4. Provide alternative text for all images, applets, image maps, and audio
and video clips. If you cannot fully describe those items with alt-text,
describe them in the context of your page. Make sure abbreviations,
acronyms and foreign phrases are clear and understandable.
5. Think about the color of your text and the color of your background,
and how "busy" a background image is. Make sure there is enough contrast
that text can be read.
6. Do not use moving, blinking, scrolling, or auto-updating text, objects
or pages.
7. If you use frames, tell your visitor why and how the frames relate to
each other. If you use tables, tell your visitor why and what to expect.
8. If a page is still not accessible, provide a link to an alternative
page, preferably a text-only page.
9. Test drive your own sites for accessibility.

From the cyberhinterlands, hope that helps...

- tom


tom mcCain, Butler University, Indianapolis USA

Work phone: 317 940-8138
Email address: tmccain@butler.edu
Web addresses: http://trevor.butler.edu/~tmccain
               http://www.crittur.com

Received on Wednesday, 16 September 1998 14:42:38 UTC