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Re: accessible rotating image scripts?

for

From: Christian Heilmann
Date: Jan 23, 2010 10:30AM

Al Sparber wrote:
> That's even worse :-)
>
> I'm not going to convince you of anything and that's certainly not my goal.
> And I certainly am not so presumptuous as to think that in this industry
> anything is "THE ANSWER". But my humble sense of logic tells me (and perhaps
> only me) that if I were blind and wanted to propose the ideal "carousel"
> here is how I would tell the designer to do it:
>
> 1. Make it so that all the links and controls that sighted people see are
> invisible to my screen reader.
> 2. Simply make it so that my screen reader reads the content linearly and
> naturally as if the sliding panels were, to a sighted person, ordinary
> blocks of content displayed on the page.
>
>
> That's it.
>
> Of course, the screen reader makers and the standards makers have to be on
> the same page and share the same logic. Sadly, though, our industry leaders
> don't often allow their logic to be simple as it takes away the fun of
> developing and promoting more complex and technology-laden solutions - the
> kind that lead to book deals and speaking gigs :-)
>
>
If that was a personal attack then you have never seen any of my
presentations or read one of my books.

On the subject matter, however, I just published an article on
smashingmagazine on how to test JavaScript solutions for basic
usability, accessibility and maintenance issues:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/21/find-the-right-javascript-solution-with-a-7-step-test/

When you look around you you will find that far too many solutions are
built not even caring about sensible markup - accessibility is really
low on the radar as a shiny image rotator is easier to sell than to make
people care about universal access.