Re: testing Web Page Accessibility in respect to a student essay

Yann Hoog wrote:
>  > 
> What I am trying to tell you is, could you, if you are the right
> person to such a question, indicate me how to quickly and efficiently
> test a Web page based on the WCAG 2.0 and how to interpate the
> testing?
> 
There is no quick and efficient way of doing it without really 
understanding the capabilities of the medium and the needs of users. 
People who try to check accessibility without human judgement are 
deluding themselves.

Even if you pay a consultant, the consultant should need to learn about 
the audience of your page and what features are important to you, as 
they will be trying to find a solution that will, at least, not be 
successfully challenged in court, but will also meet your wants.  People 
buying consultancy normally want the least change that makes the page 
legal, rather than maximum accessibility.

I personally think that pages with very simple styling are better for 
all users, but most people commissioning web pages disagree.  As was 
reminded of this recently when a page was suffering a bad case of 
overlapped text and I turned off styling.  Fortunately its underlying 
structure was passable, and I found it much easier to use unstyled even 
than if I'd used the browser on which its layout was tested.

My initial impression of your page is that, although it is physically 
readable, it has low usability because one cannot quickly work out where 
to look on the page.  Looking a bit closer, it has the almost ubiquitous 
problem of setting a body text font size smaller than the user's 
preferred size.

Possibly the main reason for getting lost on the page is that a home 
page should really have a few paragraphs that tell you about the 
organisation, but without using marketing hype.  This helps a lot for 
search engines as search engines give preference to home pages.  There 
is no such description on the page.


-- 
David Woolley
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RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
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Received on Wednesday, 3 November 2010 22:34:56 UTC