Re: J the Z on CSS transparency and Jaws

On Saturday, March 15, 2003, at 05:27 AM, David Woolley wrote:
> One reason for JAWS honouring the visual behaviour, besides the fact 
> that
> it is a bolt on  to a visual rendering model, not an aural browser, may
> well be that this sort of tactic has long been used to keyword stuff 
> pages
> for search engines (even though many search engine operators say they 
> will
> blacklist people caught doing this).  The old version of my employer's
> web page used to have large amounts of white on white text and I've 
> seen
> that particular tactic on the pages of more well known companies, both
> long after reports of search engine blacklisting.
>
> It's an unfortunate fact of life that any technique designed to
> provide alternative content for the blind is likely to be abused
> in this way, and JAWS has to be designed for run of the mill pages,
> not those written by people who care about accessibility.
>
A good plan for screen readers, if possible, would be to use the idea
of "quirks mode" as developed by a number of browsers for CSS
rendering.  There's a "quirks mode" which preserves the bad habits
that web developers have come accustomed to from legacy browsers,
and a "standards" mode which does things the right way.  The switch
is whether or not a certain doctype has been specified.

I'm not sure what the switch should be for "accessible" mode, but I'm
sure we might be able to come up with something to suggest.

--Kynn



--
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                     http://kynn.com
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain                http://idyllmtn.com
Author, CSS in 24 Hours                       http://cssin24hours.com
Inland Anti-Empire Blog                      http://blog.kynn.com/iae
Shock & Awe Blog                           http://blog.kynn.com/shock

Received on Sunday, 16 March 2003 02:48:29 UTC