RE: Simplicity of Authoring and Accessibility Tools

I use a combination of tools to discover what fixes are needed
to improve accessibility.  

-Linkbot has a web site scan that includes a listing of pages missing 
attributes (such as images missing alt tags and pages without titles); 
-Dreamweaver also has these options;  
-Homesite (I use the 3.2 old version with a built in HTML validator)
lets you run the validator over a web page and see not only the HTML 
errors, but also prompts the user to add alt tags to images lacking them;
-Bobby is useful to find problems with your web site/page that you may 
have overlooked; and
-JAWS is also useful to beta test your site with, especially to mimic a
blind
person's visit to your site.

Then one can consult a checklist and go over it manually to fine tune 
any errors and/or omissions.  

I'd be interested to hear what others use.


Joy Gatewood
Vector Research, Inc.
www.vrionline.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Charles McCathieNevile [mailto:charles@w3.org]
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2001 12:19 PM
To: Kynn Bartlett
Cc: Charles F. Munat; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: RE: Simplicity of Authoring and Accessibility Tools


I also agree that we need a good tool. For my pusrposes, I use Amaya as a
WYSIWYG tool. It doesn't do everything, but it does the things I need. Which
is my compromise. (In particular, it suffers from being somewhat
inaccessible
to a number of users. On the other hand it has an interface that makes it
fairly easy to create reasonably structured content, although it is not the
same interface as many common editors. I guess I should confess that I
actually don't find those editors intuitive either - I have to learn every
single piece of software I want to use).

There was a thread a while ago on editors that people like using. I thought
it was very valuable to see what people liked and why, and what the
limitations were.

cheers

Charles McCN

On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Kynn Bartlett wrote:

  At 1:48 AM -0800 1/19/01, Charles F. Munat wrote:
  >As for teaching HTML, I've been teaching for the better part of 20 years
and
  >I've yet to meet anyone who was incapable of learning. Different people
may
  >need different pedagogical techniques, and may learn at different rates,
but
  >anyone who's capable of operating FrontPage is certainly capable of
learning
  >enough HTML to code a web page. Whether they want to is another question.
  >For those who don't, I hope we get a decent WYSIWYG tool soon.

  We are in definite agreement that we need a good WYSIWYG tool.  I
  don't think there are any at the moment, sadly, so compromises are
  often necessary.

  --Kynn


-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134
136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia
until 6 January 2001 at:
W3C INRIA, 2004 Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex,
France

Received on Friday, 19 January 2001 14:57:18 UTC