Re: Clarification: RE: Accessible web content services.

On 29 Jul, John Foliot - WATS.ca wrote:

  [The first two lines were written by me. Could you leave
  attributions in, John ?]

>> >   This all said, what bothers me more is what I found on
>> >   http://www.gawds.org/show.php?contentid=58
>> > 
>> 
>> What exactly troubles you here?

> That comment about little yellow boxes to check for alt text is just
> plain stupid... the author clearly is mis-informed or ill-informed, and
> lacks credibility.  Remember however that GAWDS is a volunteer

  That is one problem, yes; repeated in the first two checkpoints.
  Moving on to #4, I must frankly say I don't understand. I've been
  working with accessibility since 1996 and I can't figure out what the
  author means.

   "When you click on the prompt text, does a flashing cursor appear in
    the box next to that text? If not, your forms are inaccessible."

  What does this mean ? Does it mean that to be accessible, the form
  label must, somehow, be clickable ? Lynx and braille readers spring to
  mind.

  Then there is #5 ...

    "Does the text on your website increase in size? If not, then your website
     is inaccessible to web users with poor visibility. To check:
     
       * Internet Explorer: View ? Text size
       * Netscape: Edit ? Preferences ? Appearance ? Fonts
       * Opera: File ? Preferences ? Fonts ? Minimum font size (pixels)"

   I cannot for my life figure out how setting a minimum font size, ie.
   a font size beneath which Opera will not allow a document author to
   specify sizes, can be any indication of whether the font size can be
   *increased* ?

   Let us proceed to #7:

    "7. Check that you can access all areas of your website without the use of a mouse
 
     Can you navigate through your website using just tab, shift-tab and return? If not,
     then neither can keyboard- and voice-only users."

   Isn't this a browser dependent issue ? Lynx allows me to tab forward,
   but not backwards, but the arrow keys can still be used - and there
   is little the author can do to stop it. Other browsers are different.
   I see the article author's intent, but this is at the very least in
   need of a rephrase to get rid of the device-dependent wording.




> organization, and as such prone to these types of "errors".

  And that is part of the problem. What we have is an organization with
  a "trustworthy" name, which depends on the authoring skills of
  volunteers which - sadly - does not always know their business.

  The GAWDS is a teaching organization; and as such they should avoid
  teaching the wrong things. It doesn't work the way many claim: teach
  quick, correct later.




> None-the-less Jim Bryne should be commended for his work in establishing
> the Guild... we can't always expect him to police everything on the

  Well ... if he can't, and the Guild can't, then who should tell people
  stumbling upon or being referenced to their site that THIS piece is
  correct, but THAT piece isn't ?

  This is a major problem, like it or not; though it isn't in any way
  restricted to GAWDS. Myself and many others spend quite some time
  pulling poor novices away from w3schools.com in Freenode's #web.

  I don't have a good solution at this time. I know, however, that we
  need to acknowledge that there exist a problem.

  So: how do we create an organization, of volunteers, that can be an
  umbrella for all accessibility 'workers' *without* such problems that
  will ruin the credibility ?


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

Received on Thursday, 29 July 2004 11:28:39 UTC