would have to explain what it was for, and at that point the
user has no way of deciding whether to turn it off or not.
The way you implement this could affect other user groups too. Can you be
more specific about what you want to do?
Steve Green
Director
Test Partners Ltd / First Accessibility
will be in a different document
format or will open in a new window. So my advice is to avoid non-HTML
document types and to avoid opening new windows unless there is genuinely no
option.
Steve Green
Director
Test Partners Ltd / First Accessibility
www.testpartners.co.uk
www.accessibility.co.uk
This sounds like a perfect application for Ajax. Have the TOC on the left,
the actual document on the right... opens as you click through the TOC?
Just a thought...
Or frames! Only kidding, even though they would be way more accessible than
an AJAX 'solution'.
Steve
Not everyone has a user agent that supports multiple windows or in-page
popups (e.g. JavaScript or CSS). How would you provide the additional
information to these people?
Steve
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of John Faulds
Sent: 07 March
What I meant is that the so-called 'additional' information cannot be
additional. If it is essential information then it has to go in the current
page even if someone else says that is not acceptable. If it isn't, the site
will be inaccessible or unusable to some users.
There are all kinds of
Last time I looked at various implementations of lightbox none were
accessible to the JAWS screen reader. I would be interested to know if
things have improved since then.
Steve
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of David Dixon
Sent: 07 March
Your assumption is wrong. Screen readers read the text enclosed by the
label element, not their 'for' attribute.
I am not aware of any circumstances under which any screen reader reads the
'for' attribute for a label element, so it should be safe to use your
colleague's solution.
Steve Green
That document makes it sound so easy but there's s much it doesn't
mention. We do heaps of accessible PDFs and have the scars to prove it. The
manuals are incomplete, inaccurate and Acrobat Pro is very broken. Version 8
is so bad we uninstalled it and went back to version 7 because at least we
This kind of design always causes problems during user testing because a
screen reader user does not know what comes after form controls when they
occur in the middle of a line. In fact they don't even know it's in the
middle of a line.
You are asking them to read the whole sentence then go back
We provide voice recognition training for people who want to get the best
out of Naturally Speaking. I have not tried what you are suggesting but I
would expect the error rate to be unacceptable with NS version 8 or earlier
because they rely on you training the machine to recognise your voice by
I don't see how using a table is any worse than using a definition list.
Both are wrong. Any spurious argument you use to justify a definition list
can equally apply to a table. CSS can usually achieve anything you want
visually.
Steve
_
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL
data, and if your using it to style your page
you need to take a strong look at what your doing. Tables for layout,
regardless of what your laying out is wrong.
On 5/22/07, Steve Green [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I don't see how using a table is any worse than using a definition list.
Both
when the oh-so-clever designer has abused CSS to make the seventh item
appear in third place
We had a classic case of this yesterday while doing one of our JAWS demos
for a group of developers (www.accessibility.co.uk/free_jaws_demo.htm in
case anyone is interested in coming to the next one). The
Certainly JAWS reads the content of the legend element before each label
element as described previously, and I agree about keeping the legend short.
My understanding is that other 'professional' screen readers also do,
although some of the free ones may not since they typically have greatly
To answer the question, JAWS is the most widely used screen reader by a long
way in the English speaking world and some other markets, and anecdotal
evidence suggests that it is invariably used without any relevant changes to
the configuration settings. I hesitate to call it a standard because its
Totally agree. Applying 'title' attributes to block level elements is a
nightmare for users of screen magnifiers because they can't figure out how
to get rid of the tooltip whilst keeping the content in view. You would be
surprised how much of the screen is obscured by a tooltip at magnification
Mike, you're correct, at least with respect to JAWS. In 'forms mode' it will
only read links and form controls including their labels, legends and
contents. Two other aspects of behaviour that are worth mentioning are:
1. In 'virtual cursor mode' i.e. when not in 'forms mode', JAWS does not
read
I'll be there. Anyone else?
Steve
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Swan, Henny
Sent: 29 May 2007 17:19
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: [WSG] Web Accessibility Update from Shawn Henry, London, Tuesday 5
June
Hi All,
Shawn Henry
I totally disagree with Lucien. It's nonsensical to suggest you can just
ignore parts of a sentence that you find inconvenient. The definition is
totally unambiguous - it states group thematically related controls and
labels, not group thematically related content such as controls and
labels.
I
Jackie, you said I really didn't want a whole load of div classes with
headers p tags etc churned out repeatedly down the page. Why not? It is
clearly the most appropriate way to mark up that content. And what would the
use of fieldsets change? You would still have the same quantity of markup
I can't generalise about screen readers, but JAWS would read the legend as
if it were any other paragraph i.e. it would not differentiate it from the
other text in the way it does with headers. The user may or may not work out
for themselves that it is the start of a new section of content.
JAWS'
JAWS reads legends in 'virtual cursor mode' and in 'forms mode' but it reads
them differently in the two modes.
In 'virtual cursor mode', which is the normal mode of operation for websites
and PDFs, it will simply read the legend when it reaches that element. It
does not announce the element type
want to come early. We are scheduled to finish at 5:30pm but
you are welcome to stay afterwards to get some hands-on experience or look
at some more websites.
If anyone would like to attend this demo or a future one please fill in the
form at http://www.accessibility.co.uk/free_jaws_demo.htm.
Steve
Internet Explorer users can use Alt+Down Arrow to open the SELECT element
and then use the arrow keys to navigate within it without triggering the
onChange event. One of our JAWS users does this as a matter of course for
every combobox because he cannot know if they have an onChange event
attached
The Samurai Errata have no official status so there are no certificates or
validators. They have authority tone because that's Joe Clark's style, not
because they have any authority. They are some good ideas written by some
clever people (or one clever person if you believe some of the theories).
That's not a big site so I would expect that two lists for the primary and
secondary navigation would be sufficient. Use a third list if you need a
third level of navigation. I would advise against nesting the second and
third level navigation lists, which is what people often do. It may be
:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Steve Green
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2007 1:50 PM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: RE: [WSG] Screen Reader Accessible Navigation Suggestions
That's not a big site so I would expect that two lists for the primary and
secondary navigation would be sufficient
I would like to agree with you Joe but I currently have a battle with
several design agencies who work for a multinational client of ours.
Historically they have produced websites that are predominantly Flash-based
or sliced and diced from PhotoShop. Our client wants to achieve WCAG AA and
the
Our customer is one of the largest corporations in the world. They have
several hundred brands, each of which is valued at upwards of $100M. Most of
these brands are many decades old and have historically been advertised in
traditional media such as print, TV, billboards etc. Style is everything,
Explain to them how much more money they can make...
Just how much can they make? Where's the proof? That's what they always ask
and that's what we can't answer. There are no plausible case studies to
support this. It's pure conjecture. Yes I do know about the Legal General
case study but so
The http://www.fosterandpartners.com is not a good example at all. I can see
at a glance that it violates at least three WCAG Priority 2 checkpoints, and
that's without even looking at the code. Some pages violate Priority 1
requirements too.
That's a shame because I really need stunning examples
I am one of Accessites' partners, so I am very familiar with the Showcase.
There are certainly some very good sites there, but in the 18 months or so
that the site has been live only 5 have achieved the Classic rating and none
has achieved the top rating of Timeless.
The 5 Classic sites are very
I have IE7 on Windows XP SP2 and all the Zip files download ok. Some of them
contain Word documents, and the machine opens these in WordPad because I
don't have Word on it. I get the error message Unable to load graphics
conversion filter, which is probably to be expected. The document still
opens
One of our trainers tells me that only 4% of blind people have no sight at
all. Some may not be able to see a few feet in front of them and need a
guide dog to walk up the street, yet they can see a screen close-up and may
not even need a screen reader (although they would probably benefit from
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/full-checklist.html contains a checklist. This
page links to others that explain the individual checkpoints in more (but
not necessarily adequate) detail.
http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContentID=12#Web
Checkpoints a. to k. correspond directly to WCAG
I find it hard to believe I'm reading this in the WSG. The Target website is
truly appalling - we use it to illustrate some the worst possible design
practices when we run training sessions. It discriminates against anyone who
has to use a non-graphical user agent (not just blind people), and this
I think you'll find the people of Tibet didn't build Mount Everest and
weren't even able to influence its design.
Target chose to design their site the way they did, and a professional
designer would have known that they were excluding some people from using
the website. In the face of such
Because it was explicitly designed to be accessible. And because it is
relatively easy and the incremental cost is small.
As it happens, a Braille version of a publication is one of the least useful
things you can do. In the UK only 2% of registered blind people read
Braille. However, many have
can anybody help me understand where the idea that accessibility costs
money comes from?
It certainly can do depending on the content of your site and the target
audience. I would concede that it probably doesn't cost more to produce a
standards-compliant static website (i.e. has semantic
I suspect that this lawsuit was premature
The WCAG were published 8 years ago. How long should we wait? I don't know
when Section 508 came into law but the UK's DDA was passed in 1995. Seems
like long enough to me.
But if this judge's decision becomes du jour...
It won't. Courts will assess
October 2007 12:16
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard
Sorry I have to disagree some of these points.
Comments among your text
On Oct 04, 2007, at 01:56, Steve Green wrote:
can anybody help me understand where the idea that accessibility
The cost of adding accessibility should really be zero.
Statements like this illustrate a total lack of understanding that I am
dismayed to encounter in this group. Standards compliance does not equal
accessibility. It's just one part of it, and arguably the easiest part.
As a
It is, but compliance with the WCAG doesn't automatically guarantee an
accessible site, so my statement stands. To build websites that are truly
accessible it is necessary to understand how people perceive the content and
interact with it. The WCAG are a good start but they only get you so far.
PROTECTED]
On 08/10/2007, Steve Green [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The cost of adding accessibility should really be zero.
Statements like this illustrate a total lack of understanding that I
am dismayed to encounter in this group. Standards compliance does not
equal accessibility. It's just one
The only research on this was on a tiny number of screen reader users (18 as
I recall) and they had a very slight bias towards haing the navigation
first. However, there were differences between people of differing ability.
Experienced users tended to just deal with whatever was thrown at them,
Another thought. Are you planning to position the navigation at the top of
the page even though it is at the end of the source? If so, I would say
unequivocally that is the wrong thing to do.
This will adversely affect anyone who uses keyboard navigation, because the
tab sequence will not be
i wonder how many people using screen readers ever make it down there to
the footer/copyright
In my experience they often do, although that's not because they are looking
for it. Remember that a screen reader user has no idea how long a page is
until they get to the end. They may be one line
This raises several issues. Firstly, screen readers are not all the same, so
you cannot test with one and assume the others will work just as well. Some
announce the presence of some semantic structure, some don't announce any at
all and some (I'm thinking primarily of Firevox) announce too much.
I use keyboard controls a lot too, and generally regard the use of tabindex
as a sign that a site was not designed properly in the first place. It
causes a number of problems such as being unable to predict where the focus
is going to go next. How can the designer predict what the user will want
visibility: hidden does hide the content from screen readers the same as
display:none does.
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Dave Woods
Sent: 24 October 2007 22:04
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] Minimum width help
Most disabled users, particularly sight impaired, will use your header
markup to navigate the page rather than skip links
Really? How will they do that? And what makes you believe that this is the
case?
...an accessible browser like Firefox which allows them to display a header
list...
No it
There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to tab through the links in
Firefox. Links are not on the tab sequence in Safari by default, but you can
turn that on in the Preferences. I have no idea if users actually do in
practice.
Steve
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
People with assistive technologies rarely benefit from 'title' attributes.
They are not displayed by text browsers, they are not accessible using
keyboard navigation (or devices that emulate keyboards) and they are not
read by screen readers with default settings. They are only accessible to
the screen there are alternative methods for
making link text bigger, there is no alternative method for a user to make
sense of link text.
James
On Nov 18, 2007 5:44 PM, Steve Green [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
People with assistive technologies rarely benefit from 'title' attributes
The accessibility issues relating to frames are often overstated, although
they can cause difficulties with user agents that only support one window,
such as Lynx. You can usually still use the site but it is not as convenient
because you have to keep going back to the list of frames in order to
Not at all. You know that the site only has 15 pages but your visitors
don't. The sitemap gives the visitor an immediate indication of the size of
the site, so why deny them that? It can be a big help in determining their
strategy for browsing the site.
Steve
-Original Message-
From:
I don't recommend that solution. We have tested this kind of form with a
highly proficient screen reader user, and he could not understand it at all.
In fact it was one of the few tasks he has ever failed to complete. This is
one of those cases where marking up content so it is semantically
The problem with the code below is that the content of the legend will be
read before every label. That makes it very difficult for a screen reader
user to read it fast. I would just have the question in a p or possibly
even a header element.
Once the user has read through a few questions and
Undoubtedly it's the cleanest way to achieve the required functionality, and
there are fewer accessibility issues.
However, it is less easy for a user to quickly review their answers because
they have to read the text rather than just look at the physical position of
the selected radio button.
Steve Green wrote:
The problem with the code below is that the content of the legend
will be read before every label. That makes it very difficult for a
screen reader user to read it fast. I would just have the question in
a p or possibly even a header element.
However, if the user is in JAWS
A year ago I started to evaluate FireVox 2.6 and had a dialog with Charles
Chen, its creator. At that time there is no way I would describe it as
full-fledged screen reader as it had many shortcomings. I got the
impression it was really just a hobby project, and Charles said he had
pretty much
A year ago I started to evaluate FireVox 2.6 and had a dialog with Charles
Chen, its creator. At that time there is no way I would describe it as
full-fledged screen reader as it had many shortcomings. I got the
impression it was really just a hobby project, and Charles said he had
pretty much
Read the license terms - they are very clear. You can only use the demo
version to help you assess whether you are going to purchase the full
version. Nothing else.
You explicitly cannot use the demo version for testing your websites.
Once you have decided that you are not going to purchase
I think that definition lists would be appropriate semantically but in the
real world I don't know of any user agent that does anything useful with a
definition list or any user group that derives any benefit from them.
Certainly they make no sense when read with a screen reader because you
cannot
visual browsers a better experience.
If we cheat with the markup to please user agents what's the incentive for
SR manufacturers to take care of the problem?
--
Regards,
Thierry | http://www.TJKDesign.com
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Steve Green
The desire for semantic purity is only one of many factors when deciding how
to mark up a page. Other factors include (but are not limited to) UA
support, the user experience, the time available to implement the design and
the expected life of the website. I would expect a professional designer to
Of course I made up that 1% figure but I don't suppose it's far out. Just
look at the phenomenal number of crap websites out there. There are
something like 100,000 people offering web design services in the UK (10,000
in London alone) yet GAWDS membership (which is global) is only around 500
and
I have a big problem with the term 'best practice', especially when it is
used to effectively terminate a discussion. It implies that not only is
there currently no better solution, but that there never will be.
I believe that the most appropriate solution invariably depends on the
context, and
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: RE: [WSG] semantic list with explanations
On Behalf Of Steve Green
I have a big problem with the term 'best practice', especially when it
is used to effectively terminate a discussion. It implies that not
only is there currently no better solution
resources that may be useful so I'll contact you off-list.
Steve Green
www.labscape.co.uk
_
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of James Jeffery
Sent: 15 January 2008 12:09
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: [WSG] Test Plans
Hi All.
Im not familiar with test
online. I think this is a very important part of
web standards. QA should not be an afterthought but an integral part of the
process.
Michael Horowitz
Your Computer Consultant
http://yourcomputerconsultant.com
561-394-9079
Steve Green wrote:
When you talk about 'standard' or 'government' test
Such as?
JAWS (which has something like 50% market share) has a high level of
JavaScript support and I believe that the other professional screen readers
(WindowEyes and HAL/SuperNova) also do. Free and cheap screen readers
generally don't have JavaScript support.
In our experience screen reader
. Do they usually have Flash installed? I thought that
screen readers would default to whatever is suppose to be replaced with the
Flash when using SWFObject. Maybe it defaults because the Flash isn't
enabled... Though, I guess that could be wrong as well.
Steve Green wrote:
Such as?
JAWS (which
Subject: RE: [WSG] long description and its implementation
Quoting Steve Green [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
Screen readers do not read Flash content that is embedded using
unobtrusive techniques such as SWFObject. I expect they would read the
content that is supposed to be replaced, but I have never
: RE: [WSG] long description and its implementation
Quoting Steve Green [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
Screen readers do not read Flash content that is embedded using
unobtrusive
techniques such as SWFObject. I expect they would read the content
that is
supposed to be replaced, but I have never encountered
:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Steve Green
Sent: 04 February 2008 14:23
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: RE: [WSG] long description and its implementation
I checked www.salford.ac.uk with JAWS 7.10 and 9.0, and neither of
them see either the linked image or the Flash content.
Steve
There may be specific cases where it would be right to mark up a form as a
list, although I can't think of one. As a general rule it would be wrong.
The argument against marking up a form as a list is that a form is not a
list. A form is one or more groups of form controls, and the fieldset
In my experience client-side validation works fine with screen readers but
you need to be careful how you present any error messages. It is
increasingly common to see them slid in silently, and this is a big problem
not only for screen reader users but also for magnifier users because they
are
PDFs can be more accessible than was previously possible but there are lots
of gotchas, and it's way too big a topic to cover in this reply. Note that
by default, PDFs are not tagged, so they are only marginally more accessible
than before. Maximum accessibility is obtained by tagging them, but
This kind of testing is our core business, and I have to say that these days
there is very little difference when running a particular browser version on
different Windows versions.
One difference that comes to mind is that Windows 2000 has native 56-bit
encryption, and this is not increased
During user testing I have not seen this cause any problems, particularly
when only one level is skipped. It is certainly odd when you jump from an
h1 or h2 to an h5 or h6, but users generally take even extreme cases
like this in their stride (yes, we do come across sites like this!). In
general,
It's the well known IE6 duplicate text bug.
http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer/dup-characters.html
_
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Rob Enslin
Sent: 03 April 2008 10:51
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: [WSG] Rogue text appears in IE6.
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 17 April 2008 15:36
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: RE: [WSG] accessibility and brower compatibility for Kiosk mode?
Please help me with another question, with multiple
The rationale for this checkpoint seems to have been long forgotten, and I
don't know of any user agent that has a problem with adjacent links. Nor
does anyone else it seems, which is why the WCAG Samurai recommended that
the checkpoint should be ignored.
It certainly isn't a problem for any
You can still get some old versions from the Mozilla FTP site at
http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/
It's ludicrous that they have removed some old versions - can they really
not afford the disk space? Obviously users should not be installing old
versions but developers
I have never encountered a friend, family member or other civilian who
has a problem scrolling in either direction if necessary.
A horizontal scrollbar does not prevent users from accessing content but it
reduces the efficiency with which they can do so. Not only does zooming
introduce the
Well here's a guy who has done a bit of usability testing. To quote from the
article:
We know from user testing that users hate horizontal scrolling and always
comment negatively when they encounter it.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050711.html
Of course he could be entirely wrong but I don't
/ consultant. This is a
mid-level to senior position based on London and I am offering a substantial
finders fee for anyone who can introduce a candidate that we recruit. Full
details are available on request.
Steve Green
Labscape
www.labscape.co.uk
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED
Thanks for the clarification Dennis. If it turns out that ADA does cover
websites, what would be the test for compliance?
Or is it likely to be similar to the DDA in the UK, which is concerned with
actual outcomes rather than a technical standard? Under the DDA it doesn't
matter if a website is
You can get an uninstaller from the Adobe website -
http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html#uninstaller
You can get every old Flash version at
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_14266
On Aug 14, 2008, at 3:09 AM, Krystian - Sunlust wrote:
It costs £300 man, I would prefer to get an open source solution,
community paid support.
Try getting support from Magento, likely £300 is comparably very
inexpensive, considering that commercial software ought to give you support
on
I thought that UK DDA is based on the WCAG AA guideline no? One time I
did a template coding for a UK company, and was asked to follow WCAG AA
guideline.
As for Section 508, my impression is that, despite the additional
requirements, it doesn't even quite meet the WCAG A.
In the early years of
Thanks Steve for the clarification.
OK, in the risk of showing more ignorant, I still have question. My
understanding on WCAG guidelines, are the fundamental principle of DDA,
Section 508 and similar law in other countries correct? When a website is to
be DDA or Section 508 compliant, for lack
Yes, this is the case. There has been a lot of talk about this in GAWDS, and
Steve Faulkner has written about it at
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=92.
Basically it looks like there's no MSAA support. If they don't address this,
many large organisations (at least in the UK) will not use it.
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Adam Martin
Sent: 04 September 2008 23:33
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] Google chrome... Accessibility coming very soon???
Hey guys... it is great that talk about accessibility and chrome has been
raised - but I do
Further to the discussion regarding WCAG 2.0 in government, I am interested
in the reasons why organisations are or are not choosing to adopt WCAG 2.0.
Would anyone care to share their thoughts? Are you adopting it just because
it's new and presumably better? Or have you reviewed it thoroughly and
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 03 October 2008 10:03
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: [WSG] Fieldsets Legends
Hi,
I'm trying to educate developers to add fieldsets and legends to their code
when building applications. Jaws 5.0
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Matthew Pennell
Sent: 18 October 2008 20:22
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] Big Browsing Issues on clients PC Laptop AOL
On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 7:19 PM, Kristine Cummins
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I just
Betsie does a lot more than just display the page without styles. It was
designed to improve the accessibility of the crappy websites that were the
norm a decade ago, and it is less useful on a website that is coded properly
but it still has some value. The technical spec is at
] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Patrick H. Lauke
Sent: 20 November 2008 20:54
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] Text-only version
Steve Green wrote:
You can do a lot of what Betsie does using CSS but the one thing you
can't do is replace the images with their 'alt' attributes
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