Useful Accessibility Article

[raymurphy]

Having read and gained some useful information on various accessibility issues here in the past, just thought I'd point out a very interesting article on accessibility over at [appdevadvisor.co.uk ]

(sorry if posting this url breaches the TOS).

As well as being of general interest, will be of specific interest to those of us in UK, given the potential impact of the UK Disabilities Discrimination Act which takes effect in October 2004 - one good point made is that

contrary to the popular assumption that people with impaired vision need large type some, such as those with glaucoma, develop tunnel vision and therefore need smaller type

Hope this reference is of some use to you all ...

[SuzyUK]

Thankyou raymurphy and interesting read indeed.. and the bit that you highlight especially

they seem to have singled out Amazon on another issue ;) I wonder if amazon.co.uk is one of the 100 sites being monitored?

Suzy

[ronin]

I keep going back to Bobby every few weeks or so to see if it likes my new and improved page design, but it's always complaining, which is really frustrating.

I find it terribly nitpicking.

Has anybody ever got a page through Bobby without question marks all over the place?

If not is there a simpler resource with a series of clearly worded guidelines to follow in order to be sure that a webpage at least conforms to if not exceeds European and UK legal requirements for accesibility?

Also, why in a list of article excerpts can't I stick a "Read more..." link to the article at the end of each article excerpt? Why is using a differently worded link each time and messing up the consistency of the UA 'more' accessible, than keeping the links consistent? Obviously the links are at the end of the excerpted paragraph and are in the context of that paragraph. It ought not matter, if you are using a screenreader, ought it?

This is when I get a little tired of Bobby.

[ronin]

The...

Do not use the same link phrase more than once when the links point to different URLs.

... Priority 2 guideline is still driving me nuts.

Am I the only person in the UK who is really bothered about the October deadline? >;->

I really want to get this stuff sorted out as quickly as possible. Does anyone know any other resources apart from:

a) Bobby
b) [w3.org ]

... and call me lazy and stupid, but is there a "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines for Dummies" or something?

[pageoneresults]

You could try using the Accessibility Valet [valet.webthing.com].

Once you fully understand the WCAG, you'll be able to breeze through the Bobby validation. Many of the question marks are just warnings as the validator cannot determine if what you've done is correct implementation, it is not that smart. It is up to you as a developer to look at those warnings and to make sure that you've followed the guidelines.

One of the most common ones is..

Should this be a heading?

That will occur anytime you are using inline markup like <b> or <strong>. In some instances, they should probably be headings.

It takes a while to catch on but after you've done it a few times, you'll get the hang of it.

Another common warning...

Create keyboard shortcuts and/or a logical tab order between controls.

If you can tab through your page (links, form fields, etc.) in a logical order, then you are okay.

If you are validating to WCAG at level AA or higher...

When evaluating against the WCAG at level AA or higher, any invalid or deprecated markup is an automatic fail.

[pageoneresults]

In addition to the above, there are third party tools available for the major WYSIWYG editors that will assist in your implementation of accessibility guidelines. These tools are a lifesaver as they will assist you in developing a completely accessible site at the development stages. AccVerify is the one that I utilize with FP.

[ronin]

Bobby... is not that smart.

No, indeed.

There was a suggestion by Bobby, that if I were to use identical link text like "Read more" in links pointing to different pages, I could still differentiate the links by using the title tag.

I did this, ran the page through Bobby again and it produced the same errors (!) Is it that hard to detect title tags with differing text?

As you might tell, Bobby is not my favourite piece of web based software right now.

Thanks very much for all your help and suggestions!

I'll keep bashing away at it until I get to AAA.

I'm a bit worried about this logical order tabbing though... I've configured the pages so that the body of text comes first followed by a list of content links to other pages... since that, I figure would make more sense to users of text-only browsers... but to someone navigating the page using the tab key, this means, they have to go all the way to the bottom of the text (middle column) before they start going down the menu links (left hand column)... is this going to be a problem, do you think?

<sigh>More hoops to jump through. As if standards compliance, resolution compatibility and browser compatibility wasn't enough...</sigh>

[ronin]

Blow me down. 24 hours later I'm almost there. AAA is in sight. Given the October deadlines in the UK and the growing awareness of Section 508 in the US, shouldn't there be a dedicated discussion folder devoted to standards and accessibility initiatives and guidelines?