Forum Moderators: open
- Home Page Reader from IBM [www-3.ibm.com...]
- Vischeck [vischeck.com...]
- An online Lynx Viewer [delorie.com...]
But in practice... what software (Clients) do you actually have installed to check your website?
Just to add to the online list you mentioned, I always run my sites through Bobby also.
I went down the route of asking people with sight impairments but came to the conlcusion fast that it was not all it was craked up to be. Each person had a slightly different need, some wanted white on black others yellow on black. The combinations were imense. It was a worthwhile exercise to see how it is going. I found that reaching WAI AAA was a pretty good effort although level A and AA have their merits.
Lynx and jaws as mentioned
If you have a lot of back accessibilising you could try LIFT which is quite good at doing batchwise updates.
Cheers
Each person had a slightly different need, some wanted white on black others yellow on black. The combinations were imense.
Very true - requirements will vary as much as peoples opinion on a site design will vary! That's one of the advantages of being standards compliant. To paraphrase and modify a quote by a US President:
When applied to accessibility, this can be translated as every users requirement will differ. By being standards compliant I feel that, as designers/developers, we have done a lot to make the site accessible. The users software should do the rest by allowing them to toggle colours etc. (look at the Opera style menu - High Contrast etc.).
you could try LIFT
Wow, we're talking a 500$ tool?
The whole emphasis is on accessibility so who better to study? I ran the site through Bobby and was quite surprised to learn that it failed, well, not so much that it failed TBH, but by the degree to which it failed.
Intrigued, I wrote to them, not to demonise their "failure" but to find out if this was by design and whether they considered the WAI WCAG/section 508 was flawed and does not serve it's fullest intentions.
That was just over 24hrs ago, I've heard nothing but if any of you are interested I'll post their reply.
I've found it to be quite comprehensive...and soul-destroying ;¬)
That's a reply I'd be interested in reading! You may want to get their permission to post their reply
Good point Blobfisk.
I'm still waiting as it happens - I might write again and stress more articulately that I'm not criticising, but genuinely interested.
Watch this space.
The first to be blasted are the one who make the rules/dish out awards etc.
They need to get it sorted.
Mindful of the TOS, thanks to Blobfisk, I will just spin my own interpretation on the response I received...which wasn't really what I was looking to have addressed but I can't expect a thesis - I'm grateful for the time taken to reply at all!
Basically, the reply focussed on the use of tables rather than a thoroughbred CSS approach to layout.
In recognising the WAI recommendation for using tables for tabular data, it was noted that it it's only a recommendation, and not a requirement. It's felt that the foundation is however now in place to roll out a full CSS implementation as and when there is full browser support.
That's the substance of the message.
[edited by: TheWhippinpost at 2:47 pm (utc) on July 12, 2003]
I would speculate that the RNIB design is based on what works now, for their audiences, rather than ivory-tower w3c recommendations that *may* be implemented in user agents at some indeterminate point in the future :)
IE and Jaws is the most popular "screen reader" combo in the UK. Tables do not usually cause accessibility problems, even for Lynx. There's a couple of pages on the RNIB site that talks about how and why they redesigned the site.
I would speculate that the RNIB design is based on what works now, for their audiences, rather than ivory-tower w3c recommendations that *may* be implemented in user agents at some indeterminate point in the future :)
Yeah, I concur
