Re: Standards & Accessibility compliancy in wysiwyg editors

Hi Denis,

To my knowledge, there is no all-in-one standards and accesability
compliancy editor.  But while I worked with accessibility issues for several
government agencies, the wisdom imparted to me was that the lynx browser
emulated fairly accurately what a non-sighted visitor experienced, and to
satisfy the needs of visitors who where sighted but needed larger text,
creating style sheets that used relative sizing methods was the way to go.
Citing exact point sizes can apparently lock out the use of local custom
styles on some browsers - a big problem for many poorly-sighted visitors who
rely on the changes in website text sizes they can make locally.

Another great resource is bobby.watchfire.com

Since it was bought from Cast, it is a bit more restrictive, but also more
explanatory in why it forbids certain attributes.

As for general rules, I've done enough usability research to recognize that
the top-to-bottom, left-to-right strategy of content flow works best for
both sighted and non sighted visitors, all other page elements being equal,
that is.  You can do some tricks with design elements to alter the content
flow for sighted visitors, but this is often lost on non-sighted (and
sometimes less sophisticated) browser users, and so should not be
implemented without a good thoughtful critique of how clearly it will
differentiate the content flow to both sets of visitors first.

The underlying theme that makes the content flow method work is to make sure
you have your navigational sections chunked into appropriate subgroups, with
the most important subgroups up top following a gradient scale to least
important further down, or further across in a horizontal menu.

Find a copy of lynx, load your site, and note how the content flow follows
or does not follow your expectations of a sighted viewer's experience.
You'll want the experiences in navigational and content order to synch for
assurance that a non-sighted visitor gets the same quality of usable
experience as a sighted viewer.  Then use "Bobby"  for the more technical
coding aspects of development.

Good luck with it.  The modifications can be frustrating at first, but it
doesn't take long to get their logic.

M Chamlee
Web Developer
www.client-success.com



----- Original Message -----
From: "Denis Boudreau [ CYBERcodeur.net ]" <denis@cybercodeur.net>
To: <www-html@w3.org>
Sent: Friday, November 01, 2002 12:14 PM
Subject: Standards & Accessibility compliancy in wysiwyg editors


>
> Hi all,
>
> I am wondering if there is such a thing as a
> standards-and-accessibility-compliant-wysiwyg-html-editor on the market
> today. Has anyone ever heard of such thing?
>
> If not, what would be your best recommendation for an editor that respects
> these issues?
>
> And above all, what are my options if I want to validate my work AND make
it
> accessible with a wysiwyg editor (considering I HAVE to use one for a
> specific job)?
>
> Thanks! :)
>
> Denis Boudreau
> CYBERcodeur.net
>
>
>

Received on Sunday, 3 November 2002 20:27:27 UTC