Re: [jQuery] Accessibility. Take it Seriously in Your Web Apps.
I can understand laws on physical access. My uncle is a parapalegic, and had to fight to gain access to public buildings in Jacksonville, Flordai (where he lives). But to carry the law over to the website is just pushing it. It's less expensive than building ramps to all of your stores, but why?!? At what point do we stop bowing to political correctness and start telling people you're BLIND...get a friend to help you with the website. !//-- andy matthews web developer certified advanced coldfusion programmer ICGLink, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] 615.370.1530 x737 --//- -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Morbus Iff Sent: Monday, September 11, 2006 8:28 AM To: jQuery Discussion. Subject: Re: [jQuery] Accessibility. Take it Seriously in Your Web Apps. I completely and totally disagree with the court in this case. At what point does it stop? Does my personal blog need to be accessible to the blind? What if I don't care about them? Why should the courts get involved in this No, your personal blog doesn't need to be accessible because it does not have a commercial brick and mortar store. Much like government agencies have to follow accessibility in the real world (and are /required/ to do the same on the Web with US 508), commercial entities have the same basic requirements (wheelchair ramp). These laws extending to their commercial entities on the web is not a huge leap to make. I just think that we're taking things like this a little too far, IMO. !//-- andy matthews web developer certified advanced coldfusion programmer ICGLink, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] 615.370.1530 x737 --//- It's !-- , not !- ..., and signatures should be four lines maximum, delimited by -- \n, not the monstrosity you're using. -- Morbus Iff ( take your rosaries off my ovaries ) Technical: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/779 Culture: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.gamegrene.com/ icq: 2927491 / aim: akaMorbus / yahoo: morbus_iff / jabber.org: morbus ___ jQuery mailing list discuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/ ___ jQuery mailing list discuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/
Re: [jQuery] Accessibility. Take it Seriously in Your Web Apps.
I completely and totally disagree with the court in this case. At what point does it stop? Does my personal blog need to be accessible to the blind? What if I don't care about them? Why should the courts get involved in this No, your personal blog doesn't need to be accessible because it does not have a commercial brick and mortar store. Much like government agencies have to follow accessibility in the real world (and are /required/ to do the same on the Web with US 508), commercial entities have the same basic requirements (wheelchair ramp). These laws extending to their commercial entities on the web is not a huge leap to make. I just think that we're taking things like this a little too far, IMO. !//-- andy matthews web developer certified advanced coldfusion programmer ICGLink, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] 615.370.1530 x737 --//- It's !-- , not !- ..., and signatures should be four lines maximum, delimited by -- \n, not the monstrosity you're using. -- Morbus Iff ( take your rosaries off my ovaries ) Technical: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/779 Culture: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.gamegrene.com/ icq: 2927491 / aim: akaMorbus / yahoo: morbus_iff / jabber.org: morbus ___ jQuery mailing list discuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/
Re: [jQuery] Accessibility. Take it Seriously in Your Web Apps.
Consider your own independence. Now consider needing to rely on others for many tasks in your life. Why would someone with disabilities be any less desirous of independence than yourself? Sure, it's a bit of a hassle from a developer's point of view when you have so much else already stacked on your plate. Maybe screen reader companies who want an edge on the market should work harder at working with the mess of a web that is already out there. And maybe we can all chip in a bit to make the web a more useful place for everyone. Frankly, solid semantic web design is a goal for me regardless of the accessibility issue. Where it gets tricky of course is graceful degredation of all the javascript work we're so fond of on this list. But I've heard enough other people also express that as a goal that I would expect we'd be batting pretty well there too. -Stephen Andy Matthews wrote: I can understand laws on physical access. My uncle is a parapalegic, and had to fight to gain access to public buildings in Jacksonville, Flordai (where he lives). But to carry the law over to the website is just pushing it. It's less expensive than building ramps to all of your stores, but why?!? At what point do we stop bowing to political correctness and start telling people you're BLIND...get a friend to help you with the website. !//-- andy matthews web developer certified advanced coldfusion programmer ICGLink, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] 615.370.1530 x737 --//- -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Morbus Iff Sent: Monday, September 11, 2006 8:28 AM To: jQuery Discussion. Subject: Re: [jQuery] Accessibility. Take it Seriously in Your Web Apps. I completely and totally disagree with the court in this case. At what point does it stop? Does my personal blog need to be accessible to the blind? What if I don't care about them? Why should the courts get involved in this No, your personal blog doesn't need to be accessible because it does not have a commercial brick and mortar store. Much like government agencies have to follow accessibility in the real world (and are /required/ to do the same on the Web with US 508), commercial entities have the same basic requirements (wheelchair ramp). These laws extending to their commercial entities on the web is not a huge leap to make. I just think that we're taking things like this a little too far, IMO. !//-- andy matthews web developer certified advanced coldfusion programmer ICGLink, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] 615.370.1530 x737 --//- It's !-- , not !- ..., and signatures should be four lines maximum, delimited by -- \n, not the monstrosity you're using. -- Morbus Iff ( take your rosaries off my ovaries ) Technical: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/779 Culture: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.gamegrene.com/ icq: 2927491 / aim: akaMorbus / yahoo: morbus_iff / jabber.org: morbus ___ jQuery mailing list discuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/ ___ jQuery mailing list discuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/ ___ jQuery mailing list discuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/
Re: [jQuery] Accessibility. Take it Seriously in Your Web Apps.
I think the hardest part for many web developers to grasp, including myself, is how web accessibility is handled in web apps. Just hearing the term web accessibility makes it sound like a massive task when it may be as simple as placing text in ALT or TITLE tags. Since I've never coded for this personally, I can't say whats involved but I will be looking further into this as I'm sure that my clients, one day, will be affected by this. From an Ajax perspective, though, I'm not sure of what the implications are and with the dynamic nature of Ajax-enabled apps, I'm sure that there are additional challenges that we'll face. Rey... Morbus Iff wrote: I completely and totally disagree with the court in this case. At what point No, your personal blog doesn't need to be accessible because it does not have a commercial brick and mortar store. Much like government agencies have to follow accessibility in the real world (and are /required/ to do the same on the Web with US 508), commercial entities have the same basic requirements (wheelchair ramp). These laws extending to their commercial entities on the web is not a huge leap to make. I just think that we're taking things like this a little too far, IMO. !//-- andy matthews web developer certified advanced coldfusion programmer ICGLink, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] 615.370.1530 x737 --//- It's !-- , not !- ..., and signatures should be four lines maximum, delimited by -- \n, not the monstrosity you're using. ___ jQuery mailing list discuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/
Re: [jQuery] Accessibility. Take it Seriously in Your Web Apps.
Or we could say, As a society, we will insist that people who are physically disabled be afforded a minimal level of access to large, commercial or public areas. Disabled people are human beings too, and if we can do something to ensure that those who cannot do the things we take for granted can do them too, we'll be better off in the long run. Some of our greatest geniuses have been disabled, and we should not risk losing another genius because they cannot operate at a minimal level in the new information age.-- Yehuda On 9/11/06, Andy Matthews [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I can understand laws on physical access. My uncle is a parapalegic, and hadto fight to gain access to public buildings in Jacksonville, Flordai (wherehe lives). But to carry the law over to the website is just pushing it. It's less expensive than building ramps to all of your stores, but why?!? Atwhat point do we stop bowing to political correctness and start tellingpeople you're BLIND...get a friend to help you with the website. !//--andy matthewsweb developercertified advanced coldfusion programmerICGLink, Inc.[EMAIL PROTECTED]615.370.1530 x737--//- -Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]OnBehalf Of Morbus Iff Sent: Monday, September 11, 2006 8:28 AMTo: jQuery Discussion.Subject: Re: [jQuery] Accessibility. Take it Seriously in Your Web Apps. I completely and totally disagree with the court in this case. At what point does it stop? Does my personal blog need to be accessible to the blind?What if I don't care about them? Why should the courts get involved in thisNo, your personal blog doesn't need to be accessible because it does not have a commercial brick and mortar store. Much like government agencieshave to follow accessibility in the real world (and are /required/ to dothe same on the Web with US 508), commercial entities have the same basic requirements (wheelchair ramp). These laws extending to theircommercial entities on the web is not a huge leap to make. I just think that we're taking things like this a little too far, IMO. !//-- andy matthews web developer certified advanced coldfusion programmer ICGLink, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] 615.370.1530 x737 --//-It's !-- , not !- ..., and signatures should be four linesmaximum, delimited by -- \n, not the monstrosity you're using. --Morbus Iff ( take your rosaries off my ovaries )Technical: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/779Culture: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.gamegrene.com/icq: 2927491 / aim: akaMorbus / yahoo: morbus_iff / jabber.org: morbus___ jQuery mailing listdiscuss@jquery.comhttp://jquery.com/discuss/___jQuery mailing list discuss@jquery.comhttp://jquery.com/discuss/-- Yehuda KatzWeb Developer(ph) 718.877.1325 ___ jQuery mailing list discuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/
Re: [jQuery] Accessibility. Take it Seriously in Your Web Apps.
I think the hardest part for many web developers to grasp, including myself, is how web accessibility is handled in web apps. Just hearing the term web accessibility makes it sound like a massive task when it may be as simple as placing text in ALT or TITLE tags. Since I've never coded for this personally, I can't say whats involved but I will be looking further into this as I'm sure that my clients, one day, will be At my old job, we did a large number of government websites, which had to meet up with 508. In 90% of the cases, you were fine if: * you wrote the HTML/CSS yourself - no WYSIWIGs. * you didn't use tables for presentation purposes. * you didn't use Javascript for necessary features (this wasn't that bad for me anyways, cos I was never much a fan of JS for features, and our clients didn't really want them anyways). * every image that was a link had a text equivalent somewhere. and yes, title and alt attributes [1] not just on images, but also on /every/ a element. And writing strong alt/title is the key too - saying Click here to visit the Features page is NOT what you're looking for. * you validated your HTML and your CSS at validator.w3.org, and validated every page against Bobby. Honestly, if you start with a strong and semantic and validated X?HTML design, adding the accessibility to just that HTML is easy as pie. Adding accessibility to jQuery would be a whole 'nother issue. From an Ajax perspective, though, I'm not sure of what the implications are and with the dynamic nature of Ajax-enabled apps, I'm sure that there are additional challenges that we'll face. For my needs, if you can't bookmark the results of an AJAX application, it's not ready for prime time. Note that this is the /exact/ metric I applied to good Flash apps. [1] There is no such thing as an ALT or TITLE tag - they are attributes. Please start referring to them as such. -- Morbus Iff ( omnia mutantur, nihil interit ) Technical: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/779 Culture: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.gamegrene.com/ icq: 2927491 / aim: akaMorbus / yahoo: morbus_iff / jabber.org: morbus ___ jQuery mailing list discuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/
Re: [jQuery] Accessibility. Take it Seriously in Your Web Apps.
Honestly, if you start with a strong and semantic and validated X?HTML design, adding the accessibility to just that HTML is easy as pie. Adding accessibility to jQuery would be a whole 'nother issue. Thanks for the feedback. For my needs, if you can't bookmark the results of an AJAX application, it's not ready for prime time. Note that this is the /exact/ metric I applied to good Flash apps. I'd be interested in hearing John's perspective on this. [1] There is no such thing as an ALT or TITLE tag - they are attributes. Please start referring to them as such. Yes I know. I was typing quickly and had the img and anchor tags on my mind when I wrote that. A little bossy today aren't we? ;o) Rey... ___ jQuery mailing list discuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/
Re: [jQuery] Accessibility. Take it Seriously in Your Web Apps.
Why should the courts get involved in this matter? Because few would make the effort otherwise. Sad but true. Section 508 was written to call out the fact that software companies CAN NOT ignore our disabled citizens. Even so, most do anyway. Believe me, it's MUCH easier going into a project thinking about A11y than trying to tack it on later. And if you do any work for the government or for IBM then this is moot point anyway; they won't even consider a product w/o a VPAT. ___ jQuery mailing list discuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/
Re: [jQuery] Accessibility. Take it Seriously in Your Web Apps.
I took this from the other thread "Ajax Throbber How-to?" since I believe it fits into this one better: When was the last time you disabled _javascript_? Today, yesterday and most days before that. Not for my normal web browsing, but for ensuring that the applications I build work without _javascript_. Now even if you don't care about blind people, one thing you should care about is writing good code. That includes using graceful degradation for every aspect you can. Why that is important? Because the landscape of browsers out there is incredibly complex and it's difficult to test your site with all of them. Now you can take the common "screw everything non ie/firefox" path or even include "opera/safari" in that, but you can also try to do better. No matter how old / bad a browser is, chances that it displays semantic html correctly and can handle normal forms are *very* high. So if you make a site that works just with that, and can manage it to build all this fancy _javascript_ as a layer on top of it, you've build an accessible web application for 99% of the people. That also includes the majority of internet users that do *not* have access via broadband and sometimes turn off JS / images just to gain speed. And I have to admit that I'm on a 64 kbit connection myself and most of those fancy 500 kb js web 2.0 apps have very little appeal to myself. Yet another reason I like the lightweightness of jQuery. One exception to what I've written above is the administration / back end area of your site. I think it's reasonable to set lower goals for the accessibility requirements on it unless it's going to be used by thousands of people. However, I still try do keep it light on JS anyway. Best Regards, Felix Geisendrfer -- http://www.thinkingphp.org http://www.fg-webdesign.de Mike Alsup schrieb: Why should the courts get involved in this matter? Because few would make the effort otherwise. Sad but true. Section 508 was written to call out the fact that software companies CAN NOT ignore our disabled citizens. Even so, most do anyway. Believe me, it's MUCH easier going into a project thinking about A11y than trying to tack it on later. And if you do any work for the government or for IBM then this is moot point anyway; they won't even consider a product w/o a VPAT. ___ jQuery mailing list discuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/ ___ jQuery mailing list discuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/
Re: [jQuery] Accessibility. Take it Seriously in Your Web Apps.
Visual jQuery does not work without js. That was a purposeful decision I made to get it out the door and working. Obviously, this is something that probably will change in the future, but sites like Visual jQuery often can be released in a less friendly format, *especially if an alternative exists.* The existence of John's basic API made me much more comfortable in designing Visual jQuery around _javascript_. Thoughts?On 9/11/06, Felix Geisendörfer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I took this from the other thread Ajax Throbber How-to? since I believe it fits into this one better: When was the last time you disabled _javascript_? Today, yesterday and most days before that. Not for my normal web browsing, but for ensuring that the applications I build work without _javascript_. Now even if you don't care about blind people, one thing you should care about is writing good code. That includes using graceful degradation for every aspect you can. Why that is important? Because the landscape of browsers out there is incredibly complex and it's difficult to test your site with all of them. Now you can take the common screw everything non ie/firefox path or even include opera/safari in that, but you can also try to do better. No matter how old / bad a browser is, chances that it displays semantic html correctly and can handle normal forms are *very* high. So if you make a site that works just with that, and can manage it to build all this fancy _javascript_ as a layer on top of it, you've build an accessible web application for 99% of the people. That also includes the majority of internet users that do *not* have access via broadband and sometimes turn off JS / images just to gain speed. And I have to admit that I'm on a 64 kbit connection myself and most of those fancy 500 kb js web 2.0 apps have very little appeal to myself. Yet another reason I like the lightweightness of jQuery. One exception to what I've written above is the administration / back end area of your site. I think it's reasonable to set lower goals for the accessibility requirements on it unless it's going to be used by thousands of people. However, I still try do keep it light on JS anyway. Best Regards, Felix Geisendörfer -- http://www.thinkingphp.org http://www.fg-webdesign.de Mike Alsup schrieb: Why should the courts get involved in this matter? Because few would make the effort otherwise. Sad but true. Section508 was written to call out the fact that software companies CAN NOTignore our disabled citizens. Even so, most do anyway. Believe me, it's MUCH easier going into a project thinking about A11y than tryingto tack it on later. And if you do any work for the government or forIBM then this is moot point anyway; they won't even consider a product w/o a VPAT.___jQuery mailing listdiscuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/ ___jQuery mailing listdiscuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/-- Yehuda KatzWeb Developer(ph)718.877.1325 ___ jQuery mailing list discuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/
Re: [jQuery] Accessibility. Take it Seriously in Your Web Apps.
That's an excellent point Yehuda. It's very easy to under estimate the work involved in making an entire application accessible. I've suffered through this pain for a huge Swing application. But at the same time, people often over estimate what is involved (especially for a small web-app or website). The bar is actually rather low: the app or site must be usable. If I disable css and js, can I use your site? If I use a screen reader with your site will it work? It doesn't have to be pretty and it doesn't have to be optimized (bonus points if it is though). It just has to work. Mike On 9/11/06, Yehuda Katz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Visual jQuery does not work without js. That was a purposeful decision I made to get it out the door and working. Obviously, this is something that probably will change in the future, but sites like Visual jQuery often can be released in a less friendly format, *especially if an alternative exists.* The existence of John's basic API made me much more comfortable in designing Visual jQuery around Javascript. Thoughts? ___ jQuery mailing list discuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/
[jQuery] Accessibility. Take it Seriously in Your Web Apps.
Guys, If you haven't taken accessibility seriously, then you need to read this: http://dailycal.org/sharticle.php?id=21297 Rey... ___ jQuery mailing list discuss@jquery.com http://jquery.com/discuss/
