- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 14:41:13 -0500 (EST)
- To: Jamie Fox <jfox@fenix2.dol-esa.gov>
- cc: "'Rhonda Vandine (CSPACE)'" <rvandine@unb.ca>, w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
This is how I see it: A text-only site is generally widely accessible (but not universally so - there are people who rely on well designed visual cues for important information they cannot satisfactorily extract from slabs of text) if: - It is well organised, and easily navigable - It does not use Frames inaccesibly (for simple 2 or three Frame framesets this is easy to do, it is just very rarely done.) - Where it is an alternative to a multimedia site, there is equivalent information to that contained in the multimedia elements. (ie a fancy divider graphic can be ignored, or replaced with an HR, but an important graph of something needs a description.) - It does not use tables in a manner which is inaccessible. Since the implementation of tables in many text-based browsers or combinations is pretty poor, this is a fairly restrictive requirement. The short answer is 'don't use them for layout, and if you have a complex table of data you need to think pretty hard about how to present it'. - Any 'ASCII art' is clearly marked as such, and a description is available. - It does not have links into inaccessible documents or objects. A site which does not meet these requirements MAY still be accessible, and a site which does meet them MAY NOT be accessible. They are a rough guide to the principles I use when looking at a text-only website. (Since my standard browser is Lynx, I do a lot of looking at text-only versions, whether they are seperate copies or just the rendering of a graphically designed site.) Is that the sort of thing you wanted to know? Charles On Mon, 11 Jan 1999, Jamie Fox wrote: To disagree slightly with other responses to this, I think that a truly text-only site would also not include multimedia elements. Just saying that no use of graphics defines a text only site is too limited. Also, even a text only site can be inaccessible. ASCII art and improper use of frames can trash even a text only site. (Of course, I think any use of frames trashes any site.) -Jamie Fox -----Original Message----- From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Rhonda Vandine (CSPACE) Sent: Monday, January 11, 1999 12:40 PM To: 'w3c-wai-ig@w3.org' Subject: Text-only Could someone give me the requirements of a text-only site? I need to impress upon a client that text-only does not just mean no graphics. __________________________________________________________________ Rhonda Vandine (CSpace) Community Access Canada E-mail: rvandine@unb.ca Marshall d'Avray Hall, UNB Phone: 506 447-3452 Fredericton, NB Fax: 506 447-3151 E3B 6E3 http://cap.unb.ca/ __________________________________________________________________ --Charles McCathieNevile - mailto:charles@w3.org phone: * +1 (617) 258 0992 * http://purl.oclc.org/net/charles W3C Web Accessibility Initiative - http://www.w3.org/WAI 545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, USA
Received on Monday, 11 January 1999 14:41:18 UTC