Re: Design and accessiblity issues

some further ideas...

On Friday, Nov 21, 2003, at 18:49 Japan, Ben Gilmore wrote:

3 clear good ideas, and

> 3) Use mark up rather then images to convey information (what are 
> opinions
> on the use of images for naviagation?)

Images are great for navigation if they are clear, easily distinguished 
from each other, and especially if there is accompanying text. A bit 
like most browsers have a choice of icons, icons with text, or text 
only for controls. (You can do this in a site easily enough with 
stylesheet switching...)

> 4) Use of relative rather then absolute units. Fluid Vs. fix design? 
> This is
> possibly the biggest point of contention and I currious what is the 
> list
> opions on this... People here interprite it in a number of ways.

I believe this is meant to encourage fluid design, in particular which 
will adapt to users changing the default font size. At least that is 
what I had in mind when it was first proposed for the guidelines.

Another thing I find is important is to consider valid markup and clean 
separation of the presentation into style sheets.

If you are using a content management system of some kind you will also 
find it helpful to be able to store assorted metadata about the pieces 
of content - alternatives that have been used with images (this may 
vary with context, so being able to store more than one is helpful), 
language information, a searchable set of information about the images 
you have available, etc. (The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 
are relevant to this case).

just a couple of thoughts

cheers

Chaals

--
Charles McCathieNevile                          Fundación Sidar
charles@sidar.org                                http://www.sidar.org

Received on Friday, 21 November 2003 09:32:01 UTC