- From: Bailey, Bruce <Bruce_Bailey@ed.gov>
- Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 09:13:27 -0500
- To: "'Charles F. Munat'" <chas@munat.com>, "'Dr Nick Fiddes'" <nick@scotweb.ltd.uk>
- Cc: "'w3c-wai-ig@w3.org'" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>, "'info@open.gov.uk'" <info@open.gov.uk>
Charles (et al.), I agree that deprecated elements like FONT and BGCOLOR have no place on a Double-A page. They are using textual graphics for headers which (thank you Wendy) we have finally come to a consensus is a violation of Checkpoint 3.1 (P2). The home page didn't validate when a took a look (despite the provision of a live check). Some other pages I spot checked were fine. I am not sure why they commented-out the CSS badge on the homepage when it too is provided further in. Some deeper pages claim only Double-A conformance. I also noticed that the logo button graphics are shrunk by putting in false information about the image size. Is this a violation of any standards? How does a site claiming Single-A compliance justify a high level link to Adobe Acrobat Reader? I did not come across any PDF documents, but lack of HTML equivalents would be a violation of Guideline 11. Why does a government site have banner graphics anyway? I like the feedback form since it allows contact by people in a public setting (like libraries) where an email client is not available. They do provide a bunch of email address at <http://www.open.gov.uk/services/team.htm> I CC'd this message to a generic one provided on the feedback page. I also looked for and found violations of Checkpoint 3.7 requiring the use of <Q>...</Q> instead of other forms of quotation marks (P2). The descriptions available for the sparse graphics that do exist are so poorly done that they are IMHO virtually useless: <http://www.open.gov.uk/longdesc/photos.htm> <http://www.open.gov.uk/services/standards.htm> I also agree with Charles that the efforts of the web development team are truly commendable. We really are nit picking. The site is extremely accessible, and definitely Single-A compliant. Hip, hip, hurrah! (Now that we're done with the virtual ticker tape parade, is it too much to hope that Judy might write them a note complaining about the Triple-A claims?) Bruce Bailey > -----Original Message----- > From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On > Behalf Of Charles F. Munat > Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2000 5:40 PM > To: 'Dr Nick Fiddes'; kynn@idyllmtn.com; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org > Subject: RE: Slashdot: How should Govt sites be designed? > > > Dr Nick Fiddes wrote: > > "Those of you on the other side of the pond may be interested to take > a look at the UK government's main public site: > http://www.open.gov.uk/ It claims 'WAI-AAA' standard of > accessibility and though I've not analysed in depth I've seen no > reason yet to dispute this." > > I think they're exaggerating a bit. For one thing, they use deprecated > elements like border and bgcolor. And they use tables for > layout. (They've > also messed up their DTD and the home page won't validate, but that's > another story.) > > The bgcolor is totally unnecessary. The page looks terrible > in Netscape 3 > (it would look better without the bgcolor attribute), and in all later > browsers the same effect could be had by using > style="background-color: " or > better yet a class attribute together with the style sheet. > > They are also using FONT tags! And <b>! How can this be AAA > or even AA? If > they dropped the bgcolor attribute, they could drop the font > tags as well. > They should give up on Netscape 3. Let it degrade gracefully > to a plain > look. For that matter, they could stop using the table for > formatting as > well, although that might be a problem with Netscape 4 (God, > I hate Netscape > 4). > > So: > > 3.3 (Priority 2) Use style sheets to control layout and > presentation. I read > this as no bgcolor and definitely no font or bold tags. > > 11.2 (Priority 2) Avoid deprecated features of W3C > technologies. I read this > as no Transitional XHTML. Strict only. > > When you get to Priority 3, it gets even more problematic: > > 4.2 Specify the expansion of each abbreviation or acronym in > a document > where it first occurs. Not done. > > 9.4 Create a logical tab order through links.... Not done. > > 10.5 Until user agents render adjacent links distinctly, > include non-link, > *printable* characters between links. Does <br /> count? > Wasn't there a > thread on this list about this just recently? > > 13.7 If search functions are provided, enable different types > of searches > for different skill levels and preferences. Not done. > > 5.5 Provide summaries for tables. I don't think > summary="alpha" really fits > the bill. What does that mean? (The table holds a row of > letters linking to > sections below.) Summaries should make sense to the user, not > just to the > page designer (they're not section labels). > > There are a few others, too. A big one is 10.3 (provide a linear text > alternative for ALL tables that lay out text in parallel). > > Frankly, the site looks great and they've obviously put a > tremendous effort > into it. They should be commended for this. But the site is > FAR from AAA and > really not even AA, although with a little effort they could > quickly get it > to AA in my opinion (others are less sanguine about AA pages > using tables > for layout, but I'll leave it to them to argue that point). > > I'd cc this to them, but they don't provide an email address, only a > feedback form (another big no-no in my book). > > Charles F. Munat, > Seattle, Washington
Received on Friday, 15 December 2000 09:40:23 UTC