- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 22:22:16 -0500 (EST)
- To: <jim@jimthatcher.com>
- cc: Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com>, "W3c-Wai-Ig@W3. Org" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
The Australian Open Tennis Championship's website - http://www.ausopen.com.au - used noscript to provide access to various features of the site. This may have been a response to the findings of the Human Rights and Equal opportunity Commission in a complaint about the Sydney Olympic Games Website, which required Javascript in order to get to certain parts of the site. (Originally to get to any of it, but that was changed very early on). My view is that this (and several similar exercises) did improve the accessibility of the Website. In the example discussed below, they are providing the content that would have been delivered via a javascript, when there is no active javascript interpreter. (And they are explaining that why it comes in diffferent forms on diferent viewings of the site is becuase javascript is not active in some cases - also helpful.) So I think they are providing accessibility - access to the content for people who do not have javascript enabled, for example becuase their browser does not support it, or because (as with a number of people) it interferes with orientation and they leave it off by default. Cheers Charles McCN On Tue, 20 Feb 2001, Jim Thatcher wrote: I don't understand how you can say that they are providing "equivalent content" with their NOSCRIPT tag. The NOSCRIPT content says that when you leave the site with scripting enabled you will get an alert. You don't get that alert when scripting is turned off. The scripting content is the alert. It does NOT provide that "alert" content in alternative form --- or I am missing what you are trying to say? Please note, I do not think the site has accessibility problems; my assertion on this, so far the only real life NOSCRIPT instance, is that accessibility is NOT improved with the NOSCRIPT content. Jim jim@jimthatcher.com Accessibility Consulting http://jimthatcher.com 512-306-0931 -----Original Message----- From: Kynn Bartlett [mailto:kynn@reef.com] Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2001 7:48 PM To: jim@jimthatcher.com; W3c-Wai-Ig@W3. Org Subject: RE: Any examples of <NOSCRIPT>? At 05:24 PM 2/20/2001, Jim Thatcher wrote: >I really didn't expect any, and good for you for finding a "real life" use >of NOSCRIPT. This one at http://www.section508.gov, of all places, is >certainly real life and it is effective. What it does is provide text at the >top of the page that in effect says "we use JavaScript for XYZ and since you >don't support JavaScript you are out of lunch as regards XYZ." Actually I am not entirely sure it says that. It looks like they are trying to say "if you had javascript, you'd see <x>, but since you don't, we will tell you the content you are missing; in other words, the content of the popup." >I really think that is kind of an ingenious idea. "We're using JavaScript >and you don't get the benefit of it, so TOUGH!" Hmmm. I've seen sites that do that, I don't think this is the case though. I think they are trying to do it right, even though I think they don't do it particularly well. >I guess I would say the instance is certainly not ideal. The prescription >for NOSCRIPT is that authors will provide alternate content when scripting >is not available. This example does not do that because I read "alternate" >do be in some sense equivalent. >Do you agree? Not really. I think they are well-meaning but they did not consider overall usability, just accessibility. Surely this does indeed provide the content in an alternate form; it's just awful clumsy. I think a better idea would have been for them to provide the same functionality in a different way; for example, making each link go to the page in question with a pop-up (as now) if javascript is enabled, and making it go to an "exit page" if javascript is not enabled. That might work better than this <noscript> message, which I honestly would have put somewhere near the bottom of the page. But at least they allow you to skip it, I think. --Kynn -- Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com> Technical Developer Liaison Customer Management/Edapta Reef North America Tel +1 949-567-7006 _____________________________________ ALL YOUR BUSINESS ARE BELONG TO US. _____________________________________ http://www.reef.com -- Charles McCathieNevile http://www.w3.org/People/Charles phone: +61 409 134 136 W3C Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI fax: +1 617 258 5999 Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia (or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France)
Received on Tuesday, 20 February 2001 22:22:40 UTC