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Re: WAVE 3.0 alpha

for

From: Terence de Giere
Date: Dec 17, 2002 12:55PM



Regarding the pages on http://www.hoehnermusikfan.net, the accessibility
of these pages is much better than my first attempts at creating
accessible pages.

I have a couple of comments:

1. The alternate page without the JavaScript should show the alternate
image that is viewable with the mouseover on the primary page
(http://www.hoehnermusikfan.net/datenband/spektakel/) so it is
equivalent to what the user on the scripted page sees.

2. On the primary page, because the tables seem to be functioning as
data tables (they use the CAPTION element) they should also use header
cells that define each column in the table. These two columns should
probably be called DATE and LOCATION (but of course in German) with the
appropriate ID attribute and the data cells coded using 'headers'. If
these are just format tables, it might be better to use a heading rather
than CAPTION. In some assistive technology, the presence of TH cells
will trigger the identification of the TABLE, but I am not sure if just
the presence of a CAPTION will, not having tested that scenario. You
could also use the 'scope' attribute to associate the TH cells to the TD
cells, although this had less support in slightly older screen readers
than 'headers'. If these are really intended to be data tables, then
visual format that distinguishes the headers and data and makes the
columns clearly visible would be good. The user can then scan more
quickly down the columns.

When information is rendered in audio, everything is presented linearly
and sequentially; it sometimes helps to be slightly redundant, so
instead of 'April' one could say 'April Appearances' for the CAPTION;
this reduces the cognitive load on the user who cannot scan the page
visually to refresh their memory.

The alternate version of the table, using lists and headings is fine. In
text browsers, the alternative version usually displays better, because
if a table is wide, rows wrap to the next line making it difficult to
tell which data goes with which header.

The XML stylesheets: since you also have stylesheets linked to this page
using XML as well as the HTML links, refer to
http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-stylesheet/

As you have written them, the browser will not be able to distinguish
between them. See near the bottom of this W3C page for information on
the form for multiple links to stylesheets in XML. The currently
supported method does not have a media attribute as for HTML links. This
method was quickly adopted by the W3C so that users could style an XML
document, but does not include the processes of the more complicated
later specification, XLink Typically if the file extension is *.htm or
*.html, the browser will interpret the file as an HTML file rather than
as an XML file; this is especially so because your documents do not have
an XML declaration at the beginning, so the XML stylesheets may not be
required at all.

Because your site is still being changed and finished, it probably will
not be contructive to point out some minor details of accessibility
compliance errors that can be found in the site until it is closer to
its final state. And as you can gather from this forum, not all 'errors'
are agreed upon either by us or by accessibility checking software.

Regards
Terence de Giere
<EMAIL REMOVED>



--------------------------------------
Inke van der Maat wrote:

Hello Terence,

You wrote:
My comments were motivated by the web page

http://www.hoehnermusikfan.net/ which has a claimed W3C WAI
Triple-A accessibility compliance. Triple-A compliance
includes a number of guidelines that help out legacy and
older special access technology


Speaking about older browsers or browsers that can not handle
javascript, the site http://www.hoehnermusikfan.net has one page with a
real table for the stagedates and also a mouse-over with javascript. See
http://www.hoehnermusikfan.net/datenband/spektakel/ For that page I
have an alternate page without the mouse-over and javascript and the
stagedates are in a list as I saw that in the site
http://www.accessibility.nl the browser Snoop showed all the stagedates
in the table as one long sentence that was not readable. See
http://www.hoehnermusikfan.net/datenband/spektakel/spektakelalt/ .

The site is not finished at all and still can be made more accessible
as it is now. So I am thinking about Jukkas remark that the alt text of
the imput submit button could be better as also the text next to the
image. When I find a better one, I will replace them. So I have to
reread all the texts and make them better and actualize them. The site
has AAA conformance does not say the site cannot improved anymore. I am
always working to get all my sites still better.

Greetings
Ineke van der Maat




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