RE: Dreamweaver templates and universal accessibility

Hi Louis,

Thanks very much for the clarification.

I wasn't sure how page readers/translaters would interprete or respond to
the HTML comments that marked the codes editable or not. Which is why i was
comparing templates with basic html, CSS and javascripts.  =)

Warmest regards,

Ivy Clark
Application Analyst, ARO IT (Systems Integration)
Aviva Asia Pte Ltd
------------------------


Ivy,

> Does anybody know if use of Macromedia Dreamveaver's templates will
> compromise a web site's universal accessibility?

Current versions of DW do have much better support for accessibility than
many other editing tools, but as discussed in other threads here, you still
have to exercise close control - both in creating the templates to support
accessibility, and in training authors using them.

> Or should we just stick with basic html, CSS, and javascripts?

I think you may be under a misapprehension as to the purpose and use of
templates in DW. The templates do *not* appear in the browser, but are used
as part of the editing process to generate finished HTML pages with
whatever
technology you choose to allow: all the end user will see (if he inspects
the code) is some HTML comments marking parts of the code as editable or
not. (I am not aware that templates themselves are any more or less
accessible than the rest of the DW workspace to the *author* rather than
the
end user.)

> What about 'include' clauses?

Includes (if you mean SSI includes) also have no impact per se, since they
are processed server-side, not client-side: so as long as what is in the
include file is accessible, this poses no problem.

Kind regards,

Lois Wakeman

--------------------------------
http://lois.co.uk
http://siteusability.com
http://communicationarts.co.uk

Received on Monday, 28 June 2004 05:42:25 UTC