*Pete Brunet*
IBM Accessibility Architecture and Development
11501 Burnet Road, MS 9022E004, Austin, TX 78758
Voice: (512) 838-4594, Cell: (512) 689-4155
Ionosphere: WS4G
*James M Snell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>*
Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
01/29/2008 09:42 AM
To
Pete Brunet/Austin/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
cc
[email protected]
Subject
Re: Atom and accessibility
Pete Brunet wrote:
>
> Thanks James, That's great input. I might be able to find someone to do
> the testing. Is there a corpus available that could be used? Regarding
> the two inadequacies you mentioned
>
> > 1. The atom:icon and atom:logo elements do not have title or type
> attributes.
>
> Is that being considered for a future version of Atom?
>
There are no future versions of Atom being considered :-). It would be
possible to add the attributes as an extension, or to define alternative
icon/logo link relations so the link's element type and title can be used.
> > 2. Despite requirements for the use of atom:title, atom:summary and
> atom:content, it is possible for an entry to contain zero human-readable
> text
>
> Has anyone written (or started to write) accessibility guidelines?
>
Not that I am aware of. I, for one, would welcome such guidelines and
would be willing to help write them up.
- James
> *Pete Brunet*
>
> IBM Accessibility Architecture and Development
> 11501 Burnet Road, MS 9022E004, Austin, TX 78758
> Voice: (512) 838-4594, Cell: (512) 689-4155
> Ionosphere: WS4G
>
>
>
> *James M Snell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>*
> Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> 01/28/2008 11:26 PM
>
>
> To
> Pete Brunet/Austin/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> cc
> [email protected]
> Subject
> Re: Atom and accessibility
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Hey Pete,
>
> Glad to see this :-). There are several features of Atom that have been
> designed with accessibility in mind.
>
> 1. Explicitly typed text - title's, summary's, subtitle's, rights,
> and content are all explicitly typed as either plain text, html,
> xhtml, xml or some other media type
>
> 2. Required text content - title's are required for every entry and
> textual content in the form of either an atom:summary or
> atom:content element is required. It is possible for either of
> these to be empty, but the elements themselves are required,
> allowing applications to know explicitly whether or not text
> content has been provided.
>
> 3. Language tags - The use of xml:lang attributes allow the language
> for every piece of text to be explicitly declared.
>
> 4. Link titles - The atom:link element has an optional
> language-sensitive title attribute that is a rough analog to the
> html img tag's alt attribute.
>
> 5. Link href lang - The atom:link element specifies an hreflang
> attribute that identifies the language of the referenced resource.
>
> 6. Link types - The atom:link element specifies a type attribute that
> identifies the media type of the referenced resource
>
> 7. Accessible (x)html embedded in an atom text element or atom:content
> should continue to remain accessible within the Atom feed.
>
> There are a number of areas where accessibility is somewhat inadequate:
>
> 1. The atom:icon and atom:logo elements do not have title or type
> attributes.
>
> 2. Despite requirements for the use of atom:title, atom:summary and
> atom:content, it is possible for an entry to contain zero
> human-readable text
>
> It would be helpful if someone with a strong accessibility background
> could run some tests on a corpus of atom feeds to see what accessibility
> issues appear to be most common. As far as I am aware, no such analysis
> has ever been done.
>
> - James
>
> Pete Brunet wrote:
> >
> > I am interesting in evaluating Atom to determine what the
accessibility
> > needs are. I'd limit this, at least for now, to enhancements to help
> > blind screen reader users. I'd like to eventually develop a list of
> > recommendations for improvement, e.g development of new technology or
> > creating usage guidelines. My primary interest is in relation to the
> > use of Atom in mashups, for example, a web page may start out being
> > accessible by using W3C WCAG ( Web content Accessibility
Guidelines, see
> > http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/ ) but by incorporating
content via
> > Atom it may become inaccessible. If you've done any research in this
> > area or if you have pointers to background material I'd like to hear
> > from you. I am starting at ground zero with respect to Atom (but have
> > been in the accessibility field for many years) so it's likely that no
> > information will be too basic :-)
> >
> > Should further discussion related to accessibility take place on this
> > list or atom-protocol?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > *Pete Brunet*
> >
> > IBM Accessibility Architecture and Development
> > 11501 Burnet Road, MS 9022E004, Austin, TX 78758
> > Voice: (512) 838-4594, Cell: (512) 689-4155
> > Ionosphere: WS4G
>
>
