Re: Accessibility barrier?

As far as I know,    there has to be an alternative to a visual indication of change of statuss (as an extension of "don't use color alone".  
The form might have to be changed to do this.  I would assume that the advantage of xhtml is exactly this.
You could have tags like <current> or whatever the apporpriate semantic word is most descriptive of the changes.
If the form (xhtml DTD?)is already defined but accessibility is not incorporated, the form will have to be changed, so you will have to bring this to whomever is responsible I would think.  Exactly how these changes are made accessible is not written in stone, but what is written in stone I think  
is the fact that there has to be some way of obtaining this information.
Just to see what is available here, I checked out the NY Assembly legilsative search service and found, among other items an "actions" link.
For example, using the keyword search "information technology", then choosing one that was retrieved,
 
http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/cgi-bin/showbill?billnum=A06048
If you select the [actions] link,
a nice table (accessible due to context ) arranged chronologically with categories of changes like
"referred to .." and "amend and recommit".    
I don't know how this is done, but it is quite nice I think, although I don't know if the actions are updated in real time, say, minute by minute, and maybe that is far more complex.  
Hope this is useful for further discussion at least.
 
-Steve


Steve McCaffrey
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Information Technology Services
New York State Department of Education
(518)-473-3453
smccaffr@mail.nysed.gov
Member,
New York State Workgroup on Accessibility to Information Technology 
Web Design Subcommittee 
http://web.nysed.gov/cio/access/webdesignsubcommittee.html

Received on Thursday, 13 July 2000 13:58:28 UTC