[WSG] Accessible websites (was: accessible free web hosting account)
Hi all, I believe making sites accessible is very important. We are all used to ramps near stairs, lifts near escalators, lowered curbs at intersections. We need to get used to baking in time into our projects for accessible elements. Such elements are hidden headings (to aid semantics), skip links (to aid navigation), non-Javascript styles (to enable interaction with all content) and also high-contrast style sheets for vision-impaired users. I don't believe that integrating accessibility into a project adds a significant cost to a project anyway. I found that some of these elements take quite some time to integrate. Creating high-contrast CSS can take up to a day (or more if you're new to it), non-Javascript states usually more than an hour because you also have to edit the script. If you haven't considered accessibility in your company before you'll find that a lot of time goes by convincing the backing parties (Product Managers, Project Managers) to take it on board. For an example of a high-contrast version may I suggest to check out the Sydney Morning Herald's Travel section (http://www.smh.com.au/travel/). Click on Low vision in the navigation bar (We're going to replace low vision with high contrast since the former can be perceived as discriminatory). The styles you see then have been developed together with a vision-impaired person. They're not pretty, but usable. The biggest challenge with this kind of CSS is to keep up with development and remind oneself to update the code. It's not perfect, but it's a start. Cheers, Jens The information contained in this e-mail message and any accompanying files is or may be confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, any use, dissemination, reliance, forwarding, printing or copying of this e-mail or any attached files is unauthorised. This e-mail is subject to copyright. No part of it should be reproduced, adapted or communicated without the written consent of the copyright owner. If you have received this e-mail in error please advise the sender immediately by return e-mail or telephone and delete all copies. Fairfax does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any information contained in this e-mail or attached files. Internet communications are not secure, therefore Fairfax does not accept legal responsibility for the contents of this message or attached files. *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Accessible websites (was: accessible free web hosting account)
I think it is pretty good. But one slight irony/anomaly - the 'low vision' link is in pretty small font. Took me a while to find it... notetoselftime for new glasses prescription/notetoself jim On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 4:46 PM, Jens-Uwe Korffjko...@fairfaxdigital.com.au wrote: Hi all, I believe making sites accessible is very important. We are all used to ramps near stairs, lifts near escalators, lowered curbs at intersections. We need to get used to baking in time into our projects for accessible elements. Such elements are hidden headings (to aid semantics), skip links (to aid navigation), non-Javascript styles (to enable interaction with all content) and also high-contrast style sheets for vision-impaired users. I don't believe that integrating accessibility into a project adds a significant cost to a project anyway. I found that some of these elements take quite some time to integrate. Creating high-contrast CSS can take up to a day (or more if you're new to it), non-Javascript states usually more than an hour because you also have to edit the script. If you haven't considered accessibility in your company before you'll find that a lot of time goes by convincing the backing parties (Product Managers, Project Managers) to take it on board. For an example of a high-contrast version may I suggest to check out the Sydney Morning Herald's Travel section (http://www.smh.com.au/travel/). Click on Low vision in the navigation bar (We're going to replace low vision with high contrast since the former can be perceived as discriminatory). The styles you see then have been developed together with a vision-impaired person. They're not pretty, but usable. The biggest challenge with this kind of CSS is to keep up with development and remind oneself to update the code. It's not perfect, but it's a start. Cheers, Jens The information contained in this e-mail message and any accompanying files is or may be confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, any use, dissemination, reliance, forwarding, printing or copying of this e-mail or any attached files is unauthorised. This e-mail is subject to copyright. No part of it should be reproduced, adapted or communicated without the written consent of the copyright owner. If you have received this e-mail in error please advise the sender immediately by return e-mail or telephone and delete all copies. Fairfax does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any information contained in this e-mail or attached files. Internet communications are not secure, therefore Fairfax does not accept legal responsibility for the contents of this message or attached files. *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** -- _ Jim Croft ~ jim.cr...@gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~ http://www.google.com/profiles/jim.croft ... in pursuit of the meaning of leaf ... *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Accessible websites (was: accessible free web hosting account)
On 30 Jun 2009, at 16:46, Jens-Uwe Korff wrote: For an example of a high-contrast version may I suggest to check out the Sydney Morning Herald's Travel section (http://www.smh.com.au/travel/ ). Click on Low vision in the navigation bar (We're going to replace low vision with high contrast since the former can be perceived as discriminatory). The styles you see then have been developed together with a vision-impaired person. They're not pretty, but usable. I believe a better solution to this issue is to work at the level of the browser, or operating system, rather than on site by site basis. i.e creating really intelligent browser plug-ins or applications that are able to interpret the mess on the internet and make it more usable to all. This solution means that everyone could customise their experience to make it suitable for them. On the smh travel site you have only two options (normal and low vision) to cater for the many hundreds of levels of vision impairment. The current situation seems to be that most designers do nothing about accessibility, a few make an attempt and fail, but only a few get anywhere towards succeeding. If a company/designer has a certain amount of time/money to spend on accessibility, perhaps the best way to spend it would be to donate it to free accessibility projects. I think this would probably have a greater positive effect on the web. After all, the few people that do spend any time at all on making their websites accessible, probably aren't going to be experts in accessibility, so probably won't do a very good job of it. Perhaps the WSG would be a good institution for co-ordinating such a scheme for donating money to accessible software projects? Andy *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Accessible websites (was: accessible free web hosting account)
At 6/29/2009 11:46 PM, Jens-Uwe Korff wrote: I found that some of these elements take quite some time to integrate. Creating high-contrast CSS can take up to a day (or more if you're new to it), non-Javascript states usually more than an hour because you also have to edit the script. By non-Javascript states do you mean that the website should work in the absence of JavaScript? I like to think that this is where web development should begin, with JavaScript added to enhance, not to provide core functionality. For an example of a high-contrast version may I suggest to check out the Sydney Morning Herald's Travel section (http://www.smh.com.au/travel/). Click on Low vision in the navigation bar (We're going to replace low vision with high contrast since the former can be perceived as discriminatory). The styles you see then have been developed together with a vision-impaired person. FYI, when I click on Low vision and get the high-contrast stylesheet, that right-most menu pick changes to High contrast and is highlighted, indicating that I am now on the high-contrast page. I click it again and I return to the starting stylesheet and the menu pick changes to Normal contrast. This is inconsistent -- first you're using the menu pick as a sign post to another state, and then you're using it as a current state indicator. Was this deliberate? It feels broken to me. Usually I click on menu items in order to go to the named item or to invoke the named change. You're using the menu pick initially in this way, but after you begin using it, it becomes an indicator of the current state rather than a sign post pointing off-stage. I would choose just one of those models, leaning toward sign post. If you want to indicate the current state, I would display both states and highlight the current one. Also, to ditto Jim Croft, it's terribly ironic that this menu pick becomes large enough for a person with limited vision to read only after it's been selected. Regards, Paul __ Paul Novitski Juniper Webcraft Ltd. http://juniperwebcraft.com *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
[WSG] javascript and accessibility [was: Accessible websites]
I found that some of these elements take quite some time to integrate. Creating high-contrast CSS can take up to a day (or more if you're new to it), non-Javascript states usually more than an hour because you also have to edit the script. By non-Javascript states do you mean that the website should work in the absence of JavaScript? I like to think that this is where web development should begin, with JavaScript added to enhance, not to provide core functionality. Why? Most modern accessibility aids (eg: font increase, JAWS, etc) use an existing browser, which can handle javascript. Google processes javascript and RDF tags. I've only ever heard a single argument as to why javascript-disabled should apply as a baseline for websites, specifically: if some percentage has JS disabled, you would be losing those visitors - which of course can be measured. Is there any other strong aruguments for making pages available, without javascript enabled? regards Mathew Robertson PS. Gut-feel tells me that non-JS should work, so thats how I prefer to code. *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
RE: [WSG] accessible free web hosting account
-Original Message- From: li...@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:li...@webstandardsgroup.org] On Behalf Of Craig Henneberry Sent: Friday, 26 June 2009 1:46 PM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: RE: [WSG] accessible free web hosting account Andrew Stewart wrote: Most people would love to make every website 100% accessible to everyone. However, if it costs a lot of time and money, but returns very little revenue from the small number of users with screen readers, then why should companies bother? [...] Besides, Australian law makes web accessibility a mandatory requirement. Have you heard of the Bruce Maguire vs. SOCOG (Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games) case of 1999? If every company really were equally punished for making an inaccessible website, there would be something majorly wrong with our law. I agree with Andrew that there are certain lines that need to be drawn in regards to how feasible it is to make a website accessible. Just imagine every business in Australia that doesn't have wheelchair access would be punished by law for being inaccessible! None of the little stores would ever have a chance to meet this requirements and it would be ridiculous to expect otherwise. Of course we could also say that A shop that is accessible using assistive technology (a wheelchair) is more accessible to its wider audience. But really, the expenditure would far outweigh the benefit for the small stores. Yes, a line needs to be drawn. A government or publicly funded website needs to be of course accessible, as much as can be expected (this could be interpreted as being WCAG 2.0 Level A compliant. Or Level AA? Or Level AAA?). But let's take the example of small companies creating a free service website. Let's assume somebody creates this really cool web application that is just awesome and does amazing things. And he or she offers it for free to the community, because that's just the type of person they are. Should they be punished for having a web service that is inaccessible? Are they being confronted with the options: make your site accessible or get rid of it? Is somebody going to sue them for offering a free service to the community that some of us unfortunately cannot access but others can? So you say that it's something different if it's a free web service. Let's assume there's a small, local shop that sells toys. They've been in business for many years, making just enough money to get by. The owner of the shop thinks it'd be cool to advertise their products online. So he sits down and makes a website in ImageReady. Yes, IMAGEREADY! It's all pictures, not a single ALT tag. But the website works, and he puts it online and it creates more income for him. Who's going to come and sue him for having a website that is inaccessible? Yes, of course it's easy for some of us to create accessible sites, but we need to be realistic here. For some organisations it is just not worth spending the time on making sites accessible. And the Australian law does take this into account. A website needs to be as accessible as can be reasonably expected. It was reasonable to expect that SOCOG would have a WCAG compliant website. It is not reasonable to expect that every Australian website out there is accessible, whether they sell products, offer services, or just provide John Doe's personal animated gif collection. So, coming back to the original question: who's job is it to ensure accessibility? The web developers or the assistive technology companies? The shop keepers or the companies that create wheelchairs? Of course it's a mixture of both of them. Companies that create wheelchairs try to make them as modern and useful as possible. It's the same for the companies that create other assistive technologies such as screen readers. And the web developers or shopkeepers try to make their stores as accessible as can be expected from them. If you go to a university building, you can surely expect there to be wheel chair ramps and lifts. If you go to the SOCOG website you can surely expect it to pass Priority 1 of WCAG 1. If you go to the Chinese Restaurant around the corner and there are 20 stairs and no lifts, then you will just have to go to another place to eat. And if you go to Fred's Toy Store website and none of the pictures have ALT tags, then you just go to another website that provides a better service. That's why we love the web: it's so large that there are good chances we will find what we need if not from one provider then from another. __ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4198 (20090629) __ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org
Re: [WSG] Accessible websites
Jens-Uwe Korff wrote: Hi all, I believe making sites accessible is very important. We are all used to ramps near stairs, lifts near escalators, lowered curbs at intersections. We need to get used to baking in time into our projects for accessible elements. [...] I agree wholeheartedly. These improvements serve far more people than those originally targeted, too. The cost should not be high, either - I think it's more a mind-set than hard labor. If I may make one suggestion: you could place a link to, say, the BBC accessibility pages[1] and/or the RNIB Surf Right toolbar[2] on your pages. That's what I plan to do, anyway. [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/help/accessibility/ [2] http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/PublicWebsite/public_downloads.hcsp Cordially, David -- *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
[WSG] Right div dropping below left floated div when browser resized
I have two divs as follows (no link sorry, web page is protected) - a left div for navigation, a right div containing a header and table (with tabular data). The problem is that when the browser window is reduced in size, to the point that the table can no longer shrink to fit inside the available space, the table (but not the whole right div) drops down so that the top of the table is in line with the bottom of the left navigation div. This problem occurs in IE6 but not IE7 or Firefox. Any ideas how I can fix this so the table just stays in place like it should when the horizontal scrollbar appears? Code is below. Thanks. div id=navigation --content-- /div div id=mainbody h2My List/h2 div table class=TableList --table content-- /table /div CSS is: #navigation { float: left; width: 180px; margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 9px; margin-right: 9px; padding-left: 1px; padding-right: 1px; background: #FF; border-top: 2px solid #336699; border-bottom: 2px solid #336699; } #mainbody { margin-left: 210px; margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-right: 20px; border: 0px solid black; } *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Right div dropping below left floated div when browser resized
IE6 will drop your content down to a place where it'll fit. You need to do something like this: my_container { min-width: XXpx; _width: XXpx; /* just for IE6 */ } IE6 needs specified width and then it'll behave like it was given a min-width. Joseph R. B. Taylor /Designer / Developer/ -- Sites by Joe, LLC /Clean, Simple and Elegant Web Design/ Phone: (609) 335-3076 Web: http://sitesbyjoe.com Email: j...@sitesbyjoe.com On 6/30/09 4:42 PM, Stevio wrote: I have two divs as follows (no link sorry, web page is protected) - a left div for navigation, a right div containing a header and table (with tabular data). The problem is that when the browser window is reduced in size, to the point that the table can no longer shrink to fit inside the available space, the table (but not the whole right div) drops down so that the top of the table is in line with the bottom of the left navigation div. This problem occurs in IE6 but not IE7 or Firefox. Any ideas how I can fix this so the table just stays in place like it should when the horizontal scrollbar appears? Code is below. Thanks. div id=navigation --content-- /div div id=mainbody h2My List/h2 div table class=TableList --table content-- /table /div CSS is: #navigation { float: left; width: 180px; margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 9px; margin-right: 9px; padding-left: 1px; padding-right: 1px; background: #FF; border-top: 2px solid #336699; border-bottom: 2px solid #336699; } #mainbody { margin-left: 210px; margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-right: 20px; border: 0px solid black; } *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
Re: [WSG] Right div dropping below left floated div when browser resized
Thanks Joseph, but I don't know the width however. The right width column varies according to the width of the browser and it's content. Stephen - Original Message - From: Joseph Taylor To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 10:00 PM Subject: Re: [WSG] Right div dropping below left floated div when browser resized IE6 will drop your content down to a place where it'll fit. You need to do something like this: my_container { min-width: XXpx; _width: XXpx; /* just for IE6 */ } IE6 needs specified width and then it'll behave like it was given a min-width. Joseph R. B. Taylor Designer / Developer -- Sites by Joe, LLC Clean, Simple and Elegant Web Design Phone: (609) 335-3076 Web: http://sitesbyjoe.com Email: j...@sitesbyjoe.com On 6/30/09 4:42 PM, Stevio wrote: I have two divs as follows (no link sorry, web page is protected) - a left div for navigation, a right div containing a header and table (with tabular data). The problem is that when the browser window is reduced in size, to the point that the table can no longer shrink to fit inside the available space, the table (but not the whole right div) drops down so that the top of the table is in line with the bottom of the left navigation div. This problem occurs in IE6 but not IE7 or Firefox. Any ideas how I can fix this so the table just stays in place like it should when the horizontal scrollbar appears? Code is below. Thanks. div id=navigation --content-- /div div id=mainbody h2My List/h2 div table class=TableList --table content-- /table /div CSS is: #navigation { float: left; width: 180px; margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 9px; margin-right: 9px; padding-left: 1px; padding-right: 1px; background: #FF; border-top: 2px solid #336699; border-bottom: 2px solid #336699; } #mainbody { margin-left: 210px; margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-right: 20px; border: 0px solid black; } *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
RE: [WSG] Accessible websites (was: accessible free web hosting account)
Hi, thank you for your thoughts and feedback. After all, the few people that do spend any time at all on making their websites accessible, probably aren't going to be experts in accessibility, so probably won't do a very good job of it. Yes and no. If we had no pioneers which inherently cannot make a very good job we wouldn't have innovation. I rather make a not-so-good attempt in accessibility than leaving it and wait for others to come up with something. FYI, when I click on Low vision and get the high-contrast stylesheet, that right-most menu pick changes to High contrast ... I know. As I said we are in the process of changing low vision to high contrast and that's what you get in the interim. Sorry. Will be cleaned up in one of the future releases. it's terribly ironic that this menu pick becomes large enough for a person with limited vision to read only after it's been selected. Well, you know that you've got theory and practice. In theory I agree with you and would make the link large and contrasty. In practice however we are bound by the constraints of a design to which many groups have to say yay or nay. The above-the-fold area is the most competitive part of any design. Responding to Jim's comment about [people too proud to wear] glasses: You would be surprised how many people are in that very same situation. They make up a significant number who actually benefit from accessible websites. Is there any other strong arguments for making pages available, without javascript enabled? I'd like to know too. On the Sydney Morning Herald in June less than 0.5% of users had JS disabled. Maybe we should drop that support? Anyone willing to share their numbers/reasons? Cheers, Jens The information contained in this e-mail message and any accompanying files is or may be confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, any use, dissemination, reliance, forwarding, printing or copying of this e-mail or any attached files is unauthorised. This e-mail is subject to copyright. No part of it should be reproduced, adapted or communicated without the written consent of the copyright owner. If you have received this e-mail in error please advise the sender immediately by return e-mail or telephone and delete all copies. Fairfax does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any information contained in this e-mail or attached files. Internet communications are not secure, therefore Fairfax does not accept legal responsibility for the contents of this message or attached files. *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***
RE: [WSG] Right div dropping below left floated div when browser resized
The problem is that when the browser window is reduced in size, to the point that the table can no longer shrink to fit inside the available space, the table (but not the whole right div) drops down so that the top of the table is in line with the bottom of the left navigation div. This problem occurs in IE6 but not IE7 or Firefox. Hi Stevio, I think the trick is to take the table out of the normal flow by floating it if it is in IE6. Then wrap the table with a positioned relative div that takes close to the full width of the right container. This keeps text below from creeping up the side. Here is a test page I created that seems to do what you want: !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd; html xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml; lang=en xml:lang=en head titleExample/title meta http-equiv=content-type content=application/xhtml+xml;charset=utf-8 / style type=text/css body { border: solid red 1px; } #navigation { float: left; width: 180px; margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 9px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 1px; padding-right: 1px; background: #FF; border-top: 2px solid #336699; border-bottom: 2px solid #336699; } #mainbody { position: relative; margin-left: 210px; margin-top: 20px; margin-right: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0; border: solid black 1px; } #mainbody h2 { margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #0f0; } .tablelist { position: relative; overflow: hidden; width: 100%; _width: 95%; /* may have to play with this value */ } .tablelist table { _float: left; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #ff0; } /style /head body div id=navigation ul liHome/li liAbout/li liNews/li /ul /div div id=mainbody h2My List/h2 div class=tablelist table trthCol 1/ththCol 2/ththCol 3/th/tr trtd1/tdtd2/tdtd3/td/tr /table /div /div /body /html Best regards, Kepler Gelotte Neighbor Webmaster, Inc. 156 Normandy Dr., Piscataway, NJ 08854 www.neighborwebmaster.com phone/fax: (732) 302-0904 *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ***BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:2.1 N:Gelotte;Kepler;;Mr. FN:Kepler Gelotte (kep...@neighborwebmaster.com) ORG:Neighbor Webmaster TITLE:Web Designer TEL;WORK;VOICE:(732) 302-0904 TEL;WORK;FAX:(732) 302-0904 ADR;WORK:;;156 Normandy Dr;Piscataway;NJ;08854;United States of America LABEL;WORK;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:156 Normandy Dr=0D=0APiscataway, NJ 08854=0D=0AUnited States of America URL;WORK:http://www.neighborwebmaster.com EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:kep...@neighborwebmaster.com REV:20070415T052107Z END:VCARD