- From: RUST Randal <RRust@COVANSYS.com>
- Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 07:33:27 -0400
- To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Jesper Tverskov wrote: > I fail to see that the above is important since most of > accessibility like usability can't be automatically > "measured" but need to be manually tested and evaluated. And that is exactly why, when developing a web application, usability testing is the first thing that gets cut out of the budget. Like usability, accessibility is a common-sense approach. Web pages should be built with these things in mind, not as an afterthought. Accessibility can certainly be automated, if it approached from a semantic standpoint. For example, lists of links should be marked up as unordered lists. Certain elements should have ALT and TITLE attributes attached. Perhaps accessibility validation should encompass the whole of the web page. What I mean by this is that a designer or developer should follow this process: 1. Validate HTML 2. Validate CSS 3. Validate Accessibility 4. Measure Usability In step 3, we are testing the structure of the Web page, which fits in nicely with the rest of the W3C technologies. Most designers actually test their pages in a browser without style sheet support in order to check accessibility. If the page displays logically and works within Opera without CSS and Javascript, it's going to be a very accessible web page. Testing for accessibility needs to be as valuable, and as easy, for the designer/developer as validating HTML and CSS. ---------- Randal Rust Covansys Corp. Columbus, OH
Received on Tuesday, 24 August 2004 11:34:00 UTC