Couple things here.
First, at least on Safari there is no way to detect that a user has VO
enabled. So you can't automagically enable or disable anything for VO
users. That said, you can hide text from visual users via a number of
css techniques. Here's one:
<style type="text/css">
.hidden {
height: 1px;
width: 1px;
position: absolute;
overflow: hidden;
top: -999px;
}
</style>
<div class="hidden">This is hidden text</div>
Making a "separate but equal" web app is always fraught with issues.
It's a nice way to clean house when you're dealing with a legacy app
that would need a total re-write to get even close to accessible, but
then you have two "branches" of your code so any new features need to
get implemented in two places. So there is danger that the accessible
version won't get as much love as the "mainstream" version and will
always lag behind or not get updated at all. I've seen this happen a
number of times on real products.
Given all these caveats, I will now hand you the sharp object <smile>
If you don't mind having the user self identify as wanting the extra
cruft removed (as I said, you can't detect VO) then you could use
Javascript to simply delete the extra stuff when asked to do so. I would
do it by putting a class on all the containers that you want stripped
when the user opts in for cruft removal. If they do opt in, scan the
page for items with that class and make their innards all empty.
Something like this.
<html>
<head>
<script>
function test(){
var bob=gecn(document,"abc");
for( i in bob){i.innerHTML="";}
}
//Get all elements of class name c in object o
function gecn(o,c){
if(o.getElementsByClassName)return o.getElementsByClassName(c);
else{
var d=o.getElementsByTagName('*'),m=[],l=d.length,q=new
RegExp("(\\b)"+c+"(\\b)");
do if(d[l-1].className.search(q)>-1)m[m.length]=d[l-1];
while(--l);
return m;
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<a href="#" onclick="test();return false">Remove hidden stuff</a>
<div>Here is some text <span class="abc">Some stuff to remove</span></div>
</body>
</html>
If I coded this right, clicking the Remove hidden stuff link should
delete the content of any container with a class of ABC.
Hope this helps (and makes it through the list server intact).
CB
Alex Jurgensen` wrote:
On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 3:54 PM, Alex Jurgensen` <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
Hi,I undrstand your point, but the current system appears to address a
variety of issues. We have highspeed and modem clients, blind and sighted
users, there are many different groups. We are developing a product that
will be targeted towards screen readers as a browsing mode for the current
system. I fell, after testing the current system, and so does my team at
GLBase, that the decition to have an accessible screen reader for visual
impairments is to hard from the original system. The university bought the
source code, and is having a whole lot of trouble trying to get it working
for sighted users as it is, adapting existing looks and feels, which kater
to the widest spectrum possible. Unfortunetly the developers of the code
didn't think of screen readers when designing the code as they made it har
as anything to read. I man, they duplicated every link, made contravercy
between to of the same links, and a whole other coding nightmare. The
decition comes after testing, and after the proposal to make the university
accessible for the blind.
Remember, my power is very limited as far as what my team does, and dealing
with deffness and dislecksia are not looked at by my team. I regretfuly say
that developing a screen reader version as a browsing mode, which is
ultimately our goal, is the goal of this project. We have removed most of
the elements, stacked them differently and provided the same content in a
different format. We don't want to discriminate, far from it my fellow mail
listers,. We at the AWEBSIGHT Advocacy Group of BC, Canada, strive to make
the world more accessible to everyone in the best way possible.
Thanks for your words of wisdom,
Alex,
On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 8:57 AM, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis <
[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Alex Jurgensen` wrote:
I spoke to my senior programer about my issue, and I received the
response
that we need a simple, compact interface optimized for screen readers and
modifying the existing source code would take several years to do.
Maybe this should be approached from the opposite angle.
You have a current system, which is inaccessible to screen reader users
(and likely others too - has any evaluation been done of that?). You have a
proposal to build a new system, which provides the same core content and
functionality but is screen reader accessible. (If it doesn't provide the
same core content and functionality, and it is possible to build an
accessible system to provide it, then blind users are still being
discriminated against.)
At work, I happen to deal with large websites, am familiar with the
problems of trying to put in radical fixes to legacy code, and recognize
some potential advantages to beginning afresh.
Rather than suggesting the current, cranky system should be fixed, perhaps
the best approach is to build up towards the content, functionality, and
ultimately look-and-feel (or at least, the goods bits of look-and-feel) of
the current system from a new accessible base.
Of course, this would involve considering the needs of all users, not just
sighted and blind users as radically distinct groups, which they aren't.
(They are actually more like a spectrum or even a kaleidoscope, with
offshoots into all sorts of other disabilities that an educational
institution should be thinking about in its service provision, like
deafness, dyslexia, and motor disabilities.)
--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
--
Alex A.AWEBSIGHT administrator
AWEBSIGHT web team
"Blindness is a gift, not a disability."
B.C unit
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://www.VisionMail.uni.cc/
