> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: _mallory <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [Members] Introduction and Repositories was:Re: Accessibility
> for repositories
> Date: June 9, 2015 at 12:03:32 PM EDT
> To: 3mt members <[email protected]>
> Reply-To: 3mt members <[email protected]>
>
> On Tue, Jun 09, 2015 at 06:15:47AM -0400, Chris Hofstader wrote:
>> cdh: The last “repository” I actually used in a serious manner was cvs (and
>> its DOS knock-off called PVCS)
>
> I looked at a few of the repos and they are indeed in CVS. Ick.
> And actually I think I would have to command-line these as clicking
> on any "download" links takes me to a directory, which reminded me
> of my SVN days (we only clicked links on a web page to get the URL
> we'd use in the terminal).
>
> My findings so far (I will copy it to some folder in Dropbox I
> think, so people can read it and add to it etc):
>
> Starting from the top of the main page source code, some of these
> aren't a11y-related at all.
>
> 1. Remove the silly XML encoding bit. Not only are they not sending
> this page out as XML or XHTML, but if they did, the non-well-formedness
> of the code would prevent the page from rendering anyway.
> 1.a Update the Tranny doctype with a modern one.
> 1.b Don't bother setting the character set in the language, lest some
> browser/AT combo pukes on it (leave it at lang="en") and move to a
> server header and just-in-case a meta tag (first thing in the <head>,
> even before the <title>).
> 1.c For best browser performance, set calls to stylesheets as early as
> reasonable (so after charset meta and title), and move inline javascripts
> to a single external script at the bottom of the page.
>
> 2. "Back to Savannah homepage" is good text for the first link, but one
> thing to be careful of is when sighted and low/no-sighted people are
> collaborating that everyone can call things by the same name. Here, this
> is an image of the floating Gnu guru. Unless you moused over it or
> focussed on it, a sightie would never know it was a link.
>
> 3. Skip links would be nice: while I'm also going to suggest the main
> page part not be stuck at the end of the HTML source, I still want to
> be able to jump to the relevant part without the Thousand Tabs of Death.
>
> 4. Similarly, I suggest roles: navigation and main at least. Maybe
> search as well since that may be some people's first thing in a repo of
> repos.
>
> 5. The text above the menu links ought to be headings ("Login status",
> "This page"). Headings should not be part of the lists but above them.
>
> 6. Add (visually-hidden if needed) labels to search section: "search for"
> + text field + in + "category" + select.
>
> 7. Links have unhelpfully verbose title texts. Not only not available
> to sighted non-mouse users, they're read out before link text in IE
> with ZoomText and redundantly redundant.
>
> 8. Related to the above: there is an image of text about "support
> freedom". The alt text of an image of text should be that text. Since
> it's a link, we want short link text ("Join the Free Software
> Foundation"). The link is currently wrapped around the whole image,
> but we could have the image and link separate, and enhanced with
> Javascript to make the whole image clickable if they want.
>
> 9. Visual tab order is confusing as it's first a left column, then a
> right column, and finally the middle. Of course I suggest reordering
> the code anyway. At the very least, any right columns ought to be
> last in tab order.
>
> 10. "font-size: smaller" makes the text in the right column equivalent
> to 10px (on systems where the default application font size is set to
> approx 16px-- and there is no way for a developer to know a user's
> default application font size). 10px is too damn small. Luckily for
> us nowadays, ginormous font sizes are hipster-trendy, so we can easily
> force the smallest texts to be at least 12px equivalent.
>
> 11. "boxtitle" classed items should be headings, eg "Latest news".
>
> 12. Inline styles like border="0", move to CSS.
>
> 13. Inline javascripts like div onclick="doStuff();" move to external
> Javascript file (and only put onclicks on native clickables pls).
>
> 14. Fix invalid HTML (<p> may not have <ul> as children).
>
> 15. Make "Register New Project" a link instead of just bold text. Yes,
> there's another link elsewhere, but the R of POUR means multiple
> ways to get to what is probably an important page is a Good Thing.
>
> 16. "Read more" links and similar need more link context, not just
> visual grouping.
>
> 17. Browser zoom squishes the middle/main part of the page, meaning
> eventually it cannot fit words. Using a better source ordering and
> CSS media queries means I'll be able to browser-zoom however much I
> need to. Browsers are switching to "mobile" size styles if zooming
> causes viewport widths to seem smaller.
>
> 18. I clicked "Full list" under "Hosted Projects" and got a table of
> mostly empty cells.
>
> 19. I clicked "parsley" under "Latest non-Gnu projects". The project
> name on the new page is in an h2. Suggest h1.
>
> 20. There are two links called "main" next to each other going to
> /parsley/projects, suggest making the first one a heading.
>
> 21. "Export" link has a class "unavailable" on it, visually striking
> it out. No non-visual way to show this link should be unavailable
> for any reason. Suggest making it a disabled and non-focusable link.
>
> 22. Submenu on the Parsley page is unavailable to sighted keyboarders.
> Either use JS or CSS to show the submenus.
>
> 23. Decorative icons should either be CSS backgrounds or have alt="".
>
> 24. Make "Unavailable" clear. Error pages should offer something for
> the user, either at least a link back to the project in question
> and/or for example a link to where one can join a project (as this
> caused the error in question). Some of those links are dead/useless too
> though. Not very user-friendly.
>
> 25. [+] display criteria clickables are unfocusable. All clickables must
> be keyboard focusable, and when clicked they need to move focus to
> wherever is most appropriate (if the clicked thing vanishes, move focus
> to the next focusable or the other thing you can click to re-show stuff
> again).
>
> 26. <a name="top"></a>, <center> and the such ought to be updated. Name
> attributes on anchors have been uncool since HTML4 Strict became a thing.
>
> In the pages I visited, contrast seems sufficient.
>
> cheers,
> _mallory
>
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