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Proper mark-up (was Re: Speech output for a Trip Planner)

for

From: Keith Parks
Date: Jun 6, 2008 11:10AM

On Jun 6, 2008, at 9:30 AM, Jennifer Sutton wrote:

> To bring the subject back to trip planners, I will not claim that
> it's perfect, but I find:
> www.511.org
>
> quite usable and useful with my screen reader of choice, Window-Eyes.
>

I find it interesting that you describe 511.org as usable and useful.

I took a quick look at a couple of random pages off of the top menu,
"Transit > List of Transit Providers" and "Transit > All Nighter Bus
Service", and noticed that little to none of the main content on
either of those pages is marked up with the kind of structural
elements that we are so often reminded is *key* to having the content
be "usable".

For instance,there are no <h> levels tags. Subheads are wrapped in
STRONG and sized up through a "class=titlelarge" span. A number of
sections that ought to be lists are just paragraphs with line returns.

Not that I plan on abandoning proper structural mark-up, but I would
have thought that a site like this would have been considered a
textbook case of failure in terms of accessibility/usability,
particularly for a screen reader. Clearly, for someone at least, it
is not.

******************************
Keith Parks
Graphic Designer/Web Designer
Student Affairs Communications Services
San Diego State University
San Diego, CA 92182-7444
(619) 594-1046
mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED>
http://www.sa.sdsu.edu/communications

http://kparks.deviantart.com/gallery
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