Re: And today's ironic bit of HTML is...

On Fri, Jul 05, 2002 at 08:46:36AM +0100, Andrew McFarland wrote:

> Can you give us a few examples of code which is believed to be accessible 
> but isn't? (I don't think I'm doing anything I shouldn't, but you never 
> know....)

  I can quote you an example; but I can *not* quote the source from which
  it comes. You'll all just have to trust that I am telling the truth ;)

  I was just this week doing an audit of a site in the UK, and came across
  the following construct:

<noscript>
<DIV style= "visibility:hidden">
</noscript>

  <!-- hugely complicated search form using alot of Javascript follows -->
  <!-- at this point                                                   -->

<noscript>
</DIV>
</noscript>

  At this point I was fairly certain I was still asleep, but alas. What I
  suspect is that the author wanted to make sure that those with browsers
  not supporting Javascript, or has it turned off, shouldn't see the
  search form which was quite correctly unable to function without Javascript.

  Further more he/she thought that a <noscript> with a div set to hidden
  before, and a <noscript> with the closing div after, would ensure that
  this happened.

  To me, this signals three things:

    - A willingness to look into accessibility issues,
    - A long way to go, and
    - A complete lack of understanding of how HTML works.[1]

  I am fairly sure the author did indeed believe that this code made for
  good accessibility[2], yet as you can see it made no difference what so
  ever. The search form is indeed still there in a text browser, and it
  still doesn't work. Granted, it does disappear in Mozilla, but that is
  a visual effect only.



 [1]
  Of course, such constructs as 

     <div style="position:absolute; top: 100; left: 650; z-index=4">

  and 

     <B><FONT SIZE=2 COLOR="008080"><hr color="CC3333"></FONT></B>

  does give good indications of what might be needed as well. I do hope
  to sell them a refresher course in HTML/CSS ;)



 [2]
  No, I am *not* going to try to define 'accessibiliy' - my work is about
  making things work better for users period; not 'specific group of'.


-- 
 -    Tina Holmboe                    Greytower Technologies
   tina@greytower.net                http://www.greytower.net/
   [+46] 0708 557 905

Received on Friday, 5 July 2002 08:31:28 UTC