Re: Copywriting for Screenreaders (was Alt text for URL's)

corrected:

Johnnie Apple Seed
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "david poehlman" <david.poehlman@handsontechnologeyes.com>
To: "Andy Budd" <andy@message.uk.com>; "W" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 9:32 AM
Subject: Re: Copywriting for Screenreaders (was Alt text for URL's)

Andy and all,

I think we've seen discussions on structure over the years on this list.  I
know we've seen examples of good structure and I also think most of us know
what is a hack and what is not.

I have also read the forgoing messages on this thread and while I am fully
cognacent of the capabilities of assistive technologies, I also know that
there are lots of people using ats that do not have those capabilities or
who are not using ats but are using keyboard access and good tabular I mean
tabable structure is vital for them and will remain so for some time to
come.  Listen to your pages on the phone and tell me how you think they
should be structured after listening to them on the phone through an
interface which allows navigation.  If you need such an interface to use for
this purpose, I think we can drum one up.

Folk, We need to think in terms of device independance and multi-modal 
interaction.  I saw an article
yesterday about a new ie coming out possibly as early as late this year and
one of the points in the article was that if you want to cover all the
audiences, you have to code for ie and then code for all the rest.  This
should not be so.  Things like skip nav and the ability of at to mask less
than rigorous structural constructions have done little to move us forward
toward an accessible web.

I've worked with lots of people over the years and some more recently and 
have found that there is for instance no one way that people who are blind 
use the web.  Sticking to, coming back to and improving on w3c standards is 
the only way to move forward here, and we even need to weig the standards 
not to necessarily throw any out but to determine best practices.  I am 
pleased to see that they are improving.

To bring this thread back to its original topic, one of the proposed copy 
rights is skip nav.  I ask that it not be done for all the reasons I have 
stated and more.

Thanks for all your time and attention to this matter from a rather non 
technical screen reader user who feels lucky to have broadband and the 
latest bells and whistles but whishes he didn't need them and knows that 
many do not have them.

Johnnie Apple Seed
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andy Budd" <andy@message.uk.com>
To: "W" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 8:40 AM
Subject: Re: Copywriting for Screenreaders (was Alt text for URL's)



david poehlman wrote:

> The analogy does not fly.  I repeat my question but maybe I am not
> being
> clear enough, if pages are done right, we dont need to wade through a
> bunch
> of links whether a screen reader user or for some other reason a
> keyboard
> user?

OK, rather than just saying Skip links aren't needed if pages are done
right, how about explaining how pages can be done better and provide us
with a few examples?

Andy Budd

http://www.message.uk.com/

Received on Thursday, 17 February 2005 14:49:11 UTC