Re: Conveying metadata unobtrusively in HTML

If your expectation in this example is that any title information on the 
page is going to be read by existing assistive technology, I 
think     something would need to be changed.  I tried your example using 
the url http://www.w3.org/wai.  JAWS, Window-Eyes and HAL didn't read any 
of the title information I found in the source that seemed like what you 
wanted the AT to show that indicated "valid".

I couldn't get this example to work with Home Page Reader.

Why not have an option that allows the user to choose how they want the 
results conveyed, i.e. with color or with text.  If with text then include 
the text as part of the page, not a title.


At 11:09 PM 6/2/02 +0100, Nick Kew wrote:


>Colour - and other visual styling - is a great tool for conveying
>information.  For example, if we are evaluating something, we may
>use red to highlight an error, amber for a warning, and green for OK.
>But of course, that raises the obvious accessibility issue for the
>visually impaired.
>
>In Page Valet, visual information is duplicated in text: in particular,
>accessibility messages are prefixed with, for example, "WCAG2/High"
>to indicate a WCAG level 2 checkpoint that we have diagnosed with
>a high level of certainty.  This is visually obtrusive, and I don't
>really like it.
>
>Another option I'm playing with is to abuse the "title" attribute
>for this kind of thing.  The logic is that this becomes unobtrusive
>for visual users, but accessible to non-visual devices.  It's not
>really right: technically there isn't a better mechanism in HTML,
>but an equivalent scripting solution is likely to be horribly
>long-winded and less well supported by assistive devices.
>
>I have a new service in preparation, and have just opened the first
>preview prototype at <URL:http://valet.webthing.com:8000/html-form.html>.
>This uses the title technique to highlight whether an attribute is
>valid, deprecated or bogus, duplicating visual information conveyed
>by colour.
>
>Comments please: is this technique a reasonable approach to the problem?
>Can anyone suggest a better approach?
>
>
>--
>Nick Kew
>
>Available for contract work - Programming, Unix, Networking, Markup, etc.

Received on Sunday, 2 June 2002 19:48:07 UTC