Re: Useful authoring tools RE: Simplicity of Authoring and Accessibility Tools

Tidy is available for every platform I have thought about using except my
cell phone. (It is available, in a restricted form, through a web gateway so
I guess I could use that if I could find a decent provider)

Amaya is available for Linux, other Unix forms, and Windows. It is hoped that
it will be available for MacOS X soon but not promised (this is an outside
effort)

The W3C Link Chacker is available.

All the above are licensed under the W3C license - essentially they are open
source and free and you can make modifications and sell them. It is a less
restrictive license than the GPL, or standard "copyleft" license. Details are
available from THe W3C's open source software page - http://www.w3.org/Status

iCab is Mac-only. It is in preview, and the full version is said to cost USD
$30 when it comes out. In the meantime it is free. It comes from
http://www.icab.de

Lynx is available for amny platforms. The Macintosh version I have is a bit
behind other versions (no SSL, and no table support, and a few other missing
things) but it does have speech output built in (basic, using the Mac's
inbuilt stuff. But it can be used with other things to get some decent
results. I don't recall where to get it.

Cheers

Charles McCN

On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:

  I use Amaya as my main authoring tool, becuase I like the HTMl and CSS
  interface, and becase it produces valid code automatically.

  Tidy is great for importing junk content and cleaning it up

  I use Lynx as a browser for looking at stuff in - between it, Amaya, and a
  couple of common graphics browsers I get a quick idea of what is going to
  appear. (In general I use Lynx as my first browser)

  I also use iCab as a browser - despite the fact that it doesn't support style
  sheets, it does a lot of other things reasonably nicely for me. (I use it if
  I need a graphic browser as my first choice)

  W3C has a link checking tool, so I use that.

  I also use the Amaya views for testing in. And if all else feails, of course,
  I read the source...


  cheers

  Charles McCN

  On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Gatewood, Joy wrote:

    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 22:47:23 UTC