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Re: WebAIM Discussion List Digest 23.09.2004.

for

From: Keith Patton
Date: Sep 23, 2004 11:58PM

Hi,

There are some issues around standards compliance and the behaviour of the
server controls (auto generated html components). However, this is all set
to change in the upcoming ASP.NET 2.0 which isn't far off.

Here is a good article on ASP.NET 2.0 and accessibility:

http://www.15seconds.com/issue/040727.htm

Keith Patton

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: 24 September 2004 05:03
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: WebAIM Discussion List Digest 23.09.2004.

WebAIM Discussion List Digest 23.09.2004.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Accessible .Net forms
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 11:26:20 -0600

Hello all,

Anyone have experience checking pages complied from Microsoft .Net for
accessibility?

A group of programmers in my college asked for a web accessibility
presentation from me. They are just switching from coding in Cold Fusion
Studio to Microsoft .Net. I know nothing about MS .Net as I'm not a
programmer. I typically use Dreamweaver for creating web pages.

I asked for a .Net sample to evaluate. A programmer compiled this page
at http://maat.cvmbs.colostate.edu/sop/sopmain.aspx
I was told "The only thing that works right now is go to the
Administrative Functions menu, then click Create a New Group. You can
add the info and click the 'continue' button but it doesn't go anywhere
right now (it just stores stuff in the db)." So there's not a lot of
functionality built in yet, just something preliminary for me to review.

I tried running the page thru http://validator.w3.org to first check the
markup of this main page. It seems the online validators can't handle
the .aspx pages.

How can I validate online? I tried this method but maybe there's a
better solution . . . I saved the .aspx file as .htm to my desktop and
then was able to validate at http://validator.w3.org. But I'm going to
run into problems with validators such as Bobby or Cynthia Says that can
only validate a URI, not a file from my hard drive and I don't have
access privileges to the programmers site, although I could physcially
work with them in person to have them upload the saved .htm from .aspx
files to their site for validation if that's the procedure we need to
follow. Seems clumsy.

Is there a better method?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks, Jill

P.S. Here's a rough outline of topics I plan to cover with them. Any
suggestions?

Web Accessibility for Programmers 9/23/04

Code in XHTML 1.0 Transitional or Strict
-Per recommendations by the W3C
-More on why at http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2004/xhtml-faq
-Tool to help convert and identify areas of concern
http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/

Validate Mark Up
-Password-protected pages produce "403 Forbidden Error"
-.aspx pages produce "Page cannot be displayed" or "Cannot find server"
-Save .aspx as .htm, validate at http://validator.w3.org
-Validate .css at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Use CSS
No font tags. Replace with css class style

Validate CSS
Validate .css at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Web Accessibility Resources
NCAM's Making Educational Software and Web Sites Accessible
http://ncam.wgbh.org/cdrom/guideline/
Following guidelines most applicable in order of importance:
# 3 Forms: label and identify form elements
# 1 Images: Alt attributes
# 4 Tables: Data tables, not layout tables - tags and scope attributes

Validate for Web Accessibility
-Bobby http://bobby.watchfire.com
-Cynthia Says http://www.cynthiasays.com
-WAVE http://www.wave.webaim.org - good checking reading order, esp. if
using layers that are dragged and dropped within Dreamweaver or other
content creation program



--
Jill Lenz
http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/intech/lab/

------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: Accessible .Net forms
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 12:04:18 -0600

I am getting an error indicating the page you refer to can't be found. Is it
behind a firewall? If so, then you can't test it with one of the online
validators. However, what you could do is to display the page in your
browser, save the page as something.html on your computer and then upload
the page to a validator.

-----------------------------------------------
Julian Rickards
A/Digital Publications Distribution Coordinator
Publication Services Section,
Ministry of Northern Development and Mines,
Vox: 705-670-5608 / Fax: 705-670-5960


-----Original Message-----
From: jill.lenz [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 1:27 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] Accessible .Net forms



Hello all,

Anyone have experience checking pages complied from Microsoft .Net for
accessibility?

A group of programmers in my college asked for a web accessibility
presentation from me. They are just switching from coding in Cold Fusion
Studio to Microsoft .Net. I know nothing about MS .Net as I'm not a
programmer. I typically use Dreamweaver for creating web pages.

I asked for a .Net sample to evaluate. A programmer compiled this page
at http://maat.cvmbs.colostate.edu/sop/sopmain.aspx
I was told "The only thing that works right now is go to the
Administrative Functions menu, then click Create a New Group. You can
add the info and click the 'continue' button but it doesn't go anywhere
right now (it just stores stuff in the db)." So there's not a lot of
functionality built in yet, just something preliminary for me to review.

I tried running the page thru http://validator.w3.org to first check the
markup of this main page. It seems the online validators can't handle
the .aspx pages.

How can I validate online? I tried this method but maybe there's a
better solution . . . I saved the .aspx file as .htm to my desktop and
then was able to validate at http://validator.w3.org. But I'm going to
run into problems with validators such as Bobby or Cynthia Says that can
only validate a URI, not a file from my hard drive and I don't have
access privileges to the programmers site, although I could physcially
work with them in person to have them upload the saved .htm from .aspx
files to their site for validation if that's the procedure we need to
follow. Seems clumsy.

Is there a better method?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks, Jill

P.S. Here's a rough outline of topics I plan to cover with them. Any
suggestions?

Web Accessibility for Programmers 9/23/04

Code in XHTML 1.0 Transitional or Strict
-Per recommendations by the W3C
-More on why at http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2004/xhtml-faq
-Tool to help convert and identify areas of concern
http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/

Validate Mark Up
-Password-protected pages produce "403 Forbidden Error"
-.aspx pages produce "Page cannot be displayed" or "Cannot find server"
-Save .aspx as .htm, validate at http://validator.w3.org
-Validate .css at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Use CSS
No font tags. Replace with css class style

Validate CSS
Validate .css at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Web Accessibility Resources
NCAM's Making Educational Software and Web Sites Accessible
http://ncam.wgbh.org/cdrom/guideline/
Following guidelines most applicable in order of importance:
# 3 Forms: label and identify form elements
# 1 Images: Alt attributes
# 4 Tables: Data tables, not layout tables - tags and scope attributes

Validate for Web Accessibility
-Bobby http://bobby.watchfire.com
-Cynthia Says http://www.cynthiasays.com
-WAVE http://www.wave.webaim.org - good checking reading order, esp. if
using layers that are dragged and dropped within Dreamweaver or other
content creation program



--
Jill Lenz
http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/intech/lab/

----
To subscribe or unsubscribe, visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/

------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: Accessible .Net forms
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 12:14:33 -0600

> I tried running the page thru http://validator.w3.org to first check
> the markup of this main page. It seems the online validators can't
> handle
> the .aspx pages.

Let me preface this by saying I'm by no means an expert on .net. My
background is graphic/web design and I've spent the last year or so
developing in .net. At this stage, I'm at the point somewhere in-between
'hack' and 'seasoned .net developer' ;o)

That said, .net is not very standards compliant nor accessibility minded.
Some of the main issues I've come across:

* Postbacks

In .net, a page can have multiple states. To change the state of a page,
you'd often use postbacks, which are triggered automatically on form
submissions (you're basically reloading the same page with different
variables). VisualStudio.net also lets you make pretty much any action
trigger a post back. The catch is, outside of form submits, any trigger must
be activated via javascript on the front end. On our new public site, I
decided this was unacceptable and, as such, had to code workarounds where
all 'state' information is sent back via querystrings.

* Default webcontrols

When using VisualStudio.net, you can whip up fairly quick interfaces using
many of .net's default controls. These are things like Datagrids and
Datalists. The problem is that these all tend to make your basic of tables,
and often invalid tables. There's no way to add TH tags, etc. very easily.

* Validation

Most of the built-in validation controls work very nicely on the server
side. The client-side stuff tends to be IE-centric javascript. Either skip
client-side validation or look at writing your own.

* XHTML

...net, at this point, when using vs.net, has no concept of valid xhtml
markup. Very frustrating.

Apparently, many of these issues are being addressed in the new versions of
...net and VS.net that will be coming out. Also, you can get around any of
these issues provided your developers write code to get around it. The main
catch is that, by default, VS.net does little to assist the developer in
writing fully compliant markup.

> How can I validate online? I tried this method but maybe there's a
> better solution . . . I saved the .aspx file as .htm to my desktop and
> then was able to validate at http://validator.w3.org. But I'm going to
> run into problems with validators such as Bobby or Cynthia Says that
> can only validate a URI, not a file from my hard drive and I don't
> have

Well, you can't validate ASPX using an HTML validator, so what you are doing
is just fine. You could just upload these pages if you'd prefer, but I'm not
sure why a local validator won't work for you.

Again, I don't want to call myself anyone resembling a .net expert, so
someone else please jump in and correct anything I've said if need be.

-Darrel

------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: Identifying link targets
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 14:13:20 -0600

>I also maintain that if you just have "Read more", with NOTHING else,
>you're not violating some cardinal sin.
>
>Web pages are NOT meant to be read as a list of links.

True, but in virtually every usability test I've done with people using
screen readers, the way they use the web is to first tab through all the
links on the page. The other common strategy is if the page has a lot of
links (and everyone's definition of "a lot" obviously varies), the immediate
reaction is to bring up the links list. So for both strategies, tabbing
through the links and bringing up the links list, the web page *is* read as
a list of links. I like many of the suggestions posted to this list as an
alternative to simply saying "Read more."
Mary

------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: Text alternative for flash animation
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 21:48:22 -0600

Hi Razvan,

With in the element you need to put an image or text in there to
provide an alternative to the flash.

eg...

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="/first.swf" width="707"
height="267" title="Flash Movie Animation">

<img src="/flashalt.gif" width="707" height="267" alt="Flash Move
Animation Alternative" />


Marc.

----- Original Message -----
From: "razvan"
To: "WebAIM Discussion List"
Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2004 1:42 AM
Subject: [WebAIM] Text alternative for flash animation


>
> Hello,
>
> I have this web site www.astraroger.ro and I'm having problems
> passing WCAG Priority Level 1.
> The main problem is the Flash animation on the homepage. WCAG
> requires a text alternative to .
>
> Does anyone know how can I pass Level 1?
>
> Kindest regards,
> Razvan Pop
>
> ----
> To subscribe or unsubscribe, visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: A question about credit card numbers
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 23:44:15 -0600


I've just joined the list, and (of course) I have a question.

There are two main ways of entering credit card numbers on a Web page
- accepting all 16 (or 15 in some cases) in one string, or having
four boxes each accepting four digits (except perhaps the last one
.....)

The four box option can either advance the cursor to the next box
after the fourth digit is entered, or can halt and have the user tab
or click on the next box.

My question is, does any of these methods have particular benefits,
as far as accessibility is concerned?

I prefer the four box option with the auto-tabbing, but it may be
that users with a disability or with older browsers or browsers with
no javascript enabled, may be disadvantaged.

Thanks

Kerry

====Kerry Webb
Canberra, Australia

Find local movie times and trailers on Yahoo! Movies.
http://au.movies.yahoo.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: A question about credit card numbers
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 01:13:56 -0600

On Thu, 23 Sep 2004, blackdorrit wrote:

> There are two main ways of entering credit card numbers on a Web page
> - accepting all 16 (or 15 in some cases) in one string, or having
> four boxes each accepting four digits (except perhaps the last one
> ...)

Entering credit card numbers is an example of a situation where
accessibility might be _undesirable_. We don't want to let small kids
enter their parent's credit card number, and even many adults should be
_prevented_ from using their credit card on the Web too easily. But this
means that entering a credit card number need not, and maybe _should not_,
be easy to people who are mentally or cognitively significantly below
the level of an average adult. Such people, if they have a credit card,
should really use it only as assisted by someone they can trust.

But in other respects, such as regards to visual impairment and motoric
disabilities, normal accessibility considerations apply. This means, in my
opinion, that you should use a single text input field with size="19" and
preceded by a statement that asks the user to input the credit card number
as printed on the card, using spaces if desired. Naturally the server-side
processing should take care of removing spaces. The point is that is by
far easiest to type the number as printed, grouped into four digit groups,
but users should be allowed to omit the spaces too.

> I prefer the four box option with the auto-tabbing, but it may be
> that users with a disability or with older browsers or browsers with
> no javascript enabled, may be disadvantaged.

That's one problem - they need to tab, or even click on the next field if
they don't know tabbing. (We often consider the problems of people who
cannot use a mouse; but here we should _also_ think about the majority (?)
who hasn't learned to tab fluently.) The second problem is that
auto-tabbing may surprise and distract the user. Moreover, dividing
something that is logically, functionally, and intuitively a single
identifying string is not natural and might even confuse the user.

I would apply the same principle to the expiration date: make it a single
text field, and ask the user to type it as printed on the card.

--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: A question about credit card numbers
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 01:52:02 -0600

To provide an accessible form, each field must have a label element attached

to it. So for each field that consists of four numbers you will need a
label. That just wont look good and may confuse the user even more.

The best method I have found is to have one field and a script that
automatically enters a "-" after every fourth character.
eg 1234-5678-9012-3456. The characters are inserted automatically once the
user has entered the fourth block. This looks good and is accessible. What
you also will want to do is prevent the user from entering in any other
character other than numeric characters (Don't alert, just don't let them do

it).

I've tested this on JAWS and it doesn't cause any problems (That I can tell
anyway).

Marc.



----- Original Message -----
From: "blackdorrit"
To: "WebAIM Discussion List"
Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2004 3:43 PM
Subject: [WebAIM] A question about credit card numbers


>
>
> I've just joined the list, and (of course) I have a question.
>
> There are two main ways of entering credit card numbers on a Web page
> - accepting all 16 (or 15 in some cases) in one string, or having
> four boxes each accepting four digits (except perhaps the last one
> ...)
>
> The four box option can either advance the cursor to the next box
> after the fourth digit is entered, or can halt and have the user tab
> or click on the next box.
>
> My question is, does any of these methods have particular benefits,
> as far as accessibility is concerned?
>
> I prefer the four box option with the auto-tabbing, but it may be
> that users with a disability or with older browsers or browsers with
> no javascript enabled, may be disadvantaged.
>
> Thanks
>
> Kerry
>
> ====> Kerry Webb
> Canberra, Australia
>
> Find local movie times and trailers on Yahoo! Movies.
> http://au.movies.yahoo.com
>
> ----
> To subscribe or unsubscribe, visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: A question about credit card numbers
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 04:11:03 -0600

On Thu, 23 Sep 2004, marc wrote:

> The best method I have found is to have one field and a script that
> automatically enters a "-" after every fourth character.

This, too, suffers from the problem of potential surprise and confusion.
Actually even more than automatically inserting spaces, since the number
printed on a credit card probably does _not_ contain hyphens. Moreover, it
does not really help. If the user wants to enter the number in four-digit
groups, fine; if not, don't disturb that.

> What
> you also will want to do is prevent the user from entering in any other
> character other than numeric characters (Don't alert, just don't let them
do
> it).

This is questionable, and at least a space and maybe a hyphen, maybe some
other characters as well should be allowed and treated as insignificant
separators. Disallowing input other than digits (and allowed punctuation)
silently might be useful, or it might not. Someone who tries to type data
and then sees that nothing happens will probably get disoriented. And he
probably was confused already, with a wrong idea of what should be typed
here, so it could be a big mess. Maybe you should at least have a counter
for attempts to enter nonacceptable characters into the field and a test
that causes an alert and an explanation to be show to the user, explaining
the situation. But it would simpler, and perhaps just as good or better,
to have the data checked only when leaving the field, or only when
attempting to submit the form, or only in the form handler.

After all, the form handler _must_ (for several very good reasons) be
written so that it is robust and can handle literally any data
(including a gigabyte of junk, lack of any data, and anything between)
and can issue a well-designed understandable error message for any
incorrect data, along with a new form that has been prefilled with the
part of data that was acceptable and with indications of missing and
invalid data. Doing this _right_, which is crucial, tends to keep people
so busy that there are little resources left for client-side pre-checks,
no matter what additional value they might have. In any case it's best to
start from it, and consider client side scripting afterwards, with a
critical mind - it is easy to add scripting that might help _some_ people
_some_ of the time, but it might hurt others or in other situations.

--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Testers required
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 06:59:35 -0600

Hi:

Taken from another accessibility list:

-------------

Is anybody interested in participating in this?

Fabien Vais


> > +06: TESTER REQUESTER: A team of programmers from US web
> > design firm Sperling Corporation are seeking blind people to beta-test
> > a free accessible internet browser for Macintosh computer users, as a
> > non-profit project. Testers must be blind and have a Macintosh running
> > OS-X with access to the Internet. If you are interested please send an
> > email to:
> > <EMAIL REMOVED> .
> >
> > +07: EASY READ: A font designed for vision-impaired people by the
> > American Printing House for the Blind has been improved to make it
> > even easier to read, and is available for free download on the web.
> > APHont now has bold and italic versions, and results from user group
> > testing found 60 per cent of users preferred it to other fonts:
> > http://www.aph.org/products/aphont.html .

-----------------------------------------------
Julian Rickards
A/Digital Publications Distribution Coordinator
Publication Services Section,
Ministry of Northern Development and Mines,
Vox: 705-670-5608 / Fax: 705-670-5960

------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: A question about credit card numbers
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 08:57:27 -0600

> I prefer the four box option with the auto-tabbing, but it may be
> that users with a disability or with older browsers or browsers with
> no javascript enabled, may be disadvantaged.

I'm 'fully abled' and despise the auto-tab in form fields.

I need to enter my CC number, so I tab to the start, enter 1234, and, while
still looking at my card, hit tab, 5678, tab...glance at the
screen...oh...wait, crap, now I tabbed out of the CC fields. Ugh. Go back.
Do it again.

Anything that most folks can enter fairly fast (phone numbers, CC#s, Social
Security, etc.) assume that they're going to use the tab key just like they
would doing any data entry in excel, or a DB, etc. if it's split into
multiple fields.

Just MHO, of course.

Otherwise, I agree with kjorpela...leave it as one field...and
validate/reformat it as necessary on the server end.

-Darrel

------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: A question about credit card numbers
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 09:07:51 -0600

> > I prefer the four box option with the auto-tabbing, but it may be
> > that users with a disability or with older browsers or browsers with
> > no javascript enabled, may be disadvantaged.
>
> I'm 'fully abled' and despise the auto-tab in form fields.

Auto-tabbing is contrary to the normal expected behaviour of the browser,
and should therefore ont be used. I remember seeing a short video from a
usability/accessibility test done by bunnyhop..aeh... www.bunnyfoot.com
which showed exactly this: some online banking form with multi-field
auto-tabbing CC entry...and practically all users (both visually impaired,
100% blind and 'fully abled') ran into problems there.

I'd say that the best method, imho, is to stick with a single field and do
some fairly simple reformatting server-side (strip out any non-numerical
characters and spaces, then - if required - split the string back up into
numerical groups).

Patrick
________________________________
Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk