aloha, william!
while i posted the notice about the DEED 2000 conference to VICUG-L emailing
list, as per your request, i regret that i didn't first check the web site
referenced in the conference announcement:
http://www.deed2000.org/
why? there are a number of reasons:
1) the first hyperlink on the page -- the hyperlink text for which is quote A
text-only version of this homepage is available.unquote -- leads not to a
text-only version of the page, but to a 404 (Not Found) error
2) the links that point to Conference Announcements
http://www.deed2000.org/Announcements?OpenView
and the Conference Calendar
http://www.deed2000.org/Calendar?OpenView
on the DEED 2000 homepage also yield 404 (Not Found) errors...
3) it would be of great assistance to those of us, like myself, who are using
screen readers and/or a text-based browser to access the DEED 2000 site, if the
information contained in the "DEED 2000 Contact Information" page, located at
(long URL warning):
http://www.deed2000.org/esconline/specialevent/deed.nsf/ffe82297d94787a48525
6728005d9db9/863d3e4100b1755085256728005f1934?OpenDocument
was available in a non-tablized version... even if this information is
available in a non-tablized version via the text-only version of the site, you
should place a link to the non-tablized version of this page on the tablized
version of the page...
4) as a general comment, while i applaud your inclusion of a link to a
text-only version of the DEED 2000 site as the first link on the main DEED 2000
page, it would be easier for your webmaster if he or she eliminated (or at
least vastly reduced) the need for a text-only version of the site by making
the DEED 2000 site universally accessible...
how can this be accomplished? by referring to the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines, which have been issued by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of
the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) can be found at:
http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/
a checklist for WCAG can be found at:
http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/full-checklist.html
while a list of techniques -- strategies for achieving the goals specified by
WCAG -- can be found at:
http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT-TECHS/
5) in addition, i would strongly recommend that all of the pages that comprise
the DEED 2000 site be validated using the W3C HTML Validation Service, which
can be found at:
http://validator.w3.org/
and that you also ask the maintainer of the site to run it through BOBBY -- an
accessibility evaluation tool from the Center for Applied Special Technology
(CAST)
you can either use BOBBY online to validate pages one-by-one, using either the
simple form located at:
http://www.cast.org/bobby/
or the more powerful and configurable "Advanced Bobby" form, located at:
http://www.cast.org/bobby/advanced.html
you can also ask your webmaster to download the offline version of Bobby from
http://dev.cast.org/bobby/download.cfm
so that he or she can analyze the entire site in one fell swoop...
why are the steps outlined above necessary? because the DEED 2000 site uses
markup which is known to decrease the accessibility of web-based content to
persons with certain types of disabilities... in particular, the use of
physical markup (including the now deprecated FONT element), rather than
stylesheets, to control layout and style, and the misuse of structural elements
(such as headers) for purposes of achieving a stylistic effect, rather than to
endow the document with structure, could be easily avoided and repaired, using
the resources listed above...
if you have any questions about what i've written, or if you or the maintainer
of the DEED 2000 site would like more information on, or assistance in, making
the DEED 2000 site more accessible, please do not hesitate to contact me at the
following eddress:
<[log in to unmask]>
gregory.
--------------------------------------------------------
He that lives on Hope, dies farting
-- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1763
--------------------------------------------------------
Gregory J. Rosmaita <[log in to unmask]>
WebMaster and Minister of Propaganda, VICUG NYC
<http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/vicug/index.html>
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