On Fri, 14 Dec 2001, Alice Anderson wrote:

> Today a faculty asked me to look at the site:
> http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~devise/devise/javascreen/applications.html
> and give feedback on how to make accessible.

A couple of comments:

1. From the starting page, the ALT text for the images could be slightly
more descriptive (i.e. that they are navigation-oriented).

2. The background needs to be fixed so that viewers using the page at
higher resolutions don't get the background image wrapped. Also, the
background image interferes with the text along the left margin. Text can
be offset or the image dropped to fix this.

3. the fact that there are keyboard shortcuts for the java applet(s) is a
great start. however, they work intermittently while using IE 5.5 on
Win2K. I notice that the page indicates use of a Netscape browser but my
observation is that IE is the browser of choice for the majority of
people, including people with disabilities. This is *not* an argument for
browser-specific features, btw.

4. It's nice to see good descriptions of the views and screens. Perhaps
consider add'l links to even more detailed descriptions...

5. ALT text is needed for the menu on
http://pumori.cs.wisc.edu/soil_sci/asos.html

6. At this time I don't know of a way to make dynamic graphical
information like this accessible to someone who can't see the graphs. One
possibility to consider is somehow using the Accessible Graphing
Calculator described at http://www.viewplussoft.com/agc/ to view the data.

Overall this is a good example of a specific resource that's difficult to
make accessible with current technology. However, access to the raw data
may improve access, or allow students with willingness to use alternate
tools to "look" at the data to have improved access.

-*- Dan Comden                   [log in to unmask]
    Adaptive Technology Lab      http://www.washington.edu/computing/atl/
    University of Washington     http://www.washington.edu/doit/