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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