Prototype Accessibility Proxy (RE: Accessibility Proxy seeks interested ISPs)

Nick Kew

Available for contract work - Programming, Unix, Networking, Markup, etc.

On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, Nick Kew wrote:

> On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, SHARPE, Ian wrote:
> [chop]

> That I'll take as a challenge!  I'm busy all day tomorrow and much of
> Sunday, but I shall try and find some time for hacking it next week.

OK, I've put up a prototype based on a days hacking with mod_xml.
It's a demo of concept, and I still have lots of debugging to do,
but it should nevertheless help improve many pages.  Comments will
be welcome, especially from users of assistive technologies.

What is does (bugs permitting:-)

1. Normalises HTML by inserting all optional tags
2. Strips deprecated presentational markup
3. Linearises Frames

I have a number of further ideas that remain TBD.

What it explicitly doesn't do:

1. It will refuse to serve any non-text data.  This is because I'm
   leaving a proxy wide open, and I *really* don't want it becoming
   anyone's gateway to porno-stuff!
2. It only supports HTTP, not FTP, HTTPS, etc.
3. There are no workarounds for broken servers or broken browsers.

Known bugs:

1. It is capable of generating invalid HTML
2. It gets some relative URLs wrong (to be investigated tomorrow:-)


How to test-drive it:

Just set your HTTP proxy to http://valet.webthing.com:8000/ and browse -
especially pages whose HTML markup presents accessibility problems.
Let me know if it does (or doesn't) help.  Especially, let me know
if it fails altogether.

Note - setting your HTTP proxy may fail, if your ISP or network admin
forces you to use their own proxy.  I can't do anything about that.

> Heh!  OK, when I've put up a demo, you can show me how to accomplish
> the same thing at the Client.  Oh, and if your solution requires
> equipment that is going to cost over $100 up-front to the blind user -
> many of whom are not rich - then that doesn't count!

This is a first-pass demo of the idea.  Comments invited!

-- 
Nick Kew

Available for contract work - Programming, Unix, Networking, Markup, etc.

Received on Monday, 22 April 2002 19:25:58 UTC