What makes a calendar accessible?

accessible calendars

[esha734]

Hello all,

I am redesigning my churches website and one of my stipulations
is to make (and keep) the site accessible. The church would
like to include a calendar where one person could enter events
(including recurring events if possible) that would then be
viewable by others. Google has just what we are looking for.
Is the Google calendar accessible?
What makes the calendar accessible or not accessible?

Thank you.
es

[encyclo]

It all depends on how you define "accessible" for this exercise. Do you have a particular profile in mind for the end user?

In general terms, you need to find a calendar which uses table markup correctly, including table headers so that a user with a screen reader can associate the rows and columns with the data.

Other aspects include how the calendar functions without external scripting such as Javascript, and whether user input relies on a mouse or whether the calendar is navigable and functional via the keyboard.

You should test potential candidates using the included tools in browsers such as Opera or Firefox, including disabling scripting.

[opifex]

nermware offers a good cgi calendar for free.... not fancy, but it works well

[DrDoc]

One problem with calendars is not only the markup, but localizing the calendar data itself. In some places the week starts on Sunday, whereas other places begin weeks on Monday. In Europe, for example, the week number is also important (although the method for counting weeks may differ from one country to another).

Not that it is impossible, or even all that difficult to localize calendars ... Just something to remember and do.

[edited by: DrDoc at 6:56 pm (utc) on Sep. 24, 2006]

[le_gber]

for help on how to make or modify a calendar for it to be (more) accessible, have a read through Dive into accessibility: Day 18 [diveintoaccessibility.org] - some good info there.