Please Respond Privately: Virtual Dog Show Accessibility

Dear WAI IG readers,

One of the projects run by my company, Idyll Mountain Internet,
is the Virtual Dog Show, a twice-yearly online competition for
dogs where they compete based on pictures that are posted on 
the web.

We recently redesigned our site from stratch with a new interface
and a new database-driven back end.  One of the design requirements
for the site was that it must meet at least Single-A WCAG
compliance, in addition to valid HTML and CSS.

As such, I'd appreciate it if anyone with some time to spare
could look over the site and provide your opinions on how we
can increase the accessibility.  We realize that on one level,
the Virtual Dog Show is very much like some of the "art galleries"
that website artistes talk about -- a collection of visual
images where the visual experience is essential to the entire
use of the site.

On the other hand, we also realize that our entrants are a diverse
lot of people, and it's entirely possible that someone who can't
actually see a picture of her dog may nevertheless want to post
a picture of that dog in the show.  And so we strive for high
accessibility on our site.

Do you think we've met that goal?  Here's the URL:

      http://www2.dogshow.com/spring2000/

Your comments off-list are appreciated, as well as suggestions
about what to do -- if anything -- about the "visual experience"
problem.  LONGDESC are both impractical and inadequate for this
purpose, I believe.  Is there anything we -can- do?

--Kynn Bartlett
   kynn@idyllmtn.com

-- 
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                   http://www.kynn.com/
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet      http://www.idyllmtn.com/
Become AWARE of Web Accessibility!                  http://aware.hwg.org/
The Spring 2000 Virtual Dog Show is now open!     http://www.dogshow.com/

Received on Friday, 21 January 2000 21:09:32 UTC