From the Langa list May 1

2) More on Site Accessibility

We recently discussed ways to make your web site accessible to the
visually impaired. (See http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2000/2000-04-
20.htm#5) Several readers pointed out that the same improvements also
help surfers using text-only web browsers, including some of the new
hand-held PCs.

And there's more. Reader Paul Rudolf writes:

     Hi Fred.

     Picture a web page with 2 images side-by-side. On the left is
     an image of two cows, and on the right is an image of a
     skydiver over a lake. Using the method of describing the image
     with the "alt" attribute, a descriptive addition would be
     simply "Two Cows" for the first image and "Skydiving over a
     lake" for the second. Using a text browser, the text "Two Cows
     Skydiving over a lake" would not only be displayed on the
     screen in place of the images, but would be what the screen
     reader (for a text based browser) would "speak" to the user.

     Not very descriptive. The use of the "longdescription"
     attribute and related "d" tag and "longdescriptionfile" leads
     to a more understandable page and fits the W3C
     recommendations, used as standards by most manufacturers of
     "screen reader devices"....

     Another misuse of the "alt" attribute is to describe the
     graphics used in conjunction with text along side of
     navigation buttons. Sometimes using alt="" or alt="*" will
     assist understanding these images when viewed with a text
     browser. According to the HTML 4.0 specification, the "alt"
     attribute is a required attribute of the img tag. Once again,
     without a solid set of standards, many methods exist to
     accomplish similar tasks and view similar results.

     BTW, I submitted...[the] langa.com home pages to
     http://www.cast.org/bobby  for accessibility analysis. Your
     page didn't do so well. :( When you get to doing a feature
     article on accessibility, The Center for Applied Technology
     (cast.org) would be a great place to go for many answers.

Thanks, Paul. I've tried "Bobby" in the past but found it very fussy; it
complains about many items that actually aren't wrong. Changing these
"errors" often just involves things like changing the *placement* of an
Alt text within a tag, for example; and the placement doesn't matter at
all---except to Bobby. Still, it's a great idea actually to check your
web pages for accessibility, and not simply to assume they're OK. Bobby
is useful for this, although you need to go through the results very
carefully to see which are real problems and which are false alarms. I
hope to "re-Bobby" the Langa.Com site soon

Reader Bruce Hadley adds:

     Software/Web accessibility was the lead in the 4/24 issue of
     Software Success, a weekly newsletter for software
     entrepreneurs. ( http://www.softwaresuccess.com )The story
     lists 10 common mistakes programmers/designers make, along
     with some great resources they can use.

     Another example, that fits in with your "PC" (political
     correctness) comments about Microsoft: One of the very best
     resources on this topic is Microsoft. Their site
     (http://www.microsoft.com/enable) offers a wealth of tips,
     documents, and examples, as well as a superb (and free)
     documentary video about disabled people winning with
     technology.

Thanks Bruce, and all who wrote in.


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