RE: Request for site review

Thanks Marjolein,

I don't have much say about the bloat size.  My assumption is that Sailor
will hear from the many school systems that have 28.8 modems at best.

Bad design is NOT a P1 violation.  With accessibility issues I have some
influence.  With usability concerns I am just one voice in the crowd.

I am embarrassed that I didn't notice that they are using .GIF'd text.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Marjolein Katsma [mailto:access@javawoman.com]
> Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2000 1:20 AM
> To: Bruce Bailey; Web Accessibility Initiative
> Subject: Re: Request for site review
>
>
> First, it takes a loooong time to load with some 100 images and
> nothing to do or read while it's all loading. On a fast cable
> modem it took all of 90 seconds to fully load; that certainly
> fails the "hold your breath" test. A simple refresh of the page
> takes just as long, although the images should be in the cache:
> it seems as if the code is making sure the images are downloaded
> anyway, cache or no (I timed this several times, each time it
> took 90 seconds).
>
> (I stayed on for the test; normally, with nothing to read, I
> would have bailed out after 10 seconds already.)
>
> Once loaded, the mousovers react very slowly, so frequently my
> mouse is in once place and the "active" item (arrow) somewhere
> else, left behind, not even trying to follow the mouse it seems.
> Someone surfing with images turned off is almost totally lost,
> unless they're using a browser that shows ALT attributes as
> popups (but the submenu is gone).
>
> I don't know if it's accessible with a screen reader. It's
> certainly not *usable* without one! If I *had* to use this site,
> I'd hate every second of it.
>
> At 17:05 2000-04-12 -0400, Bruce Bailey wrote:
>> Dear Group,
>>
>> Please take at look at URL:
>> http://www.sailor.lib.md.us/
>> and provide me feedback (on or off the list as you see fit).
>>
>> (1)  What can Sailor do to improve accessibility.
>
> Try usability first? 100 images or so is too much to wait for.
> Anything wrong with text? Even if you want mouseovers, that can
> be done with text as well.
>
>> (2)  Is the site, as is, WCAG P1 compliant or not?  If not, why not?
>> (3)  Is their a general technique for making such "pop-up" links
>> accessible?
>> (Or does one just ensure that said URLs are replicated elsewhere?)
>
> Marjolein Katsma
> HomeSite Help - http://hshelp.com/
> Bookstore for Webmasters - http://hshelp.com/bookstore/bookstore.html

Received on Thursday, 13 April 2000 09:09:06 UTC