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Re: evaluating accessibility with WCAG 2.0 (Angela French)

for

From: ckrugman
Date: May 15, 2011 4:57PM

I realize that this is a late response but as a screen reader user I very
seldom rely on the labels and attributes applied to links. There are other
issues involving accessibility that I find much more bothersome such as the
use of unlabeled images or flash content that was not properly labeled by
site developers.
Chuck
----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Kirkpatrick" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Monday, April 11, 2011 5:31 AM
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] evaluating accessibility with WCAG 2.0 (Angela French)


I find myself wondering where to draw the line. If the argument for the use
of a list for any set of related links is based on the need for users to
know that a set of items are in a group and how many items are in that group
then perhaps lists should be used more - cnn.com has story after story on
their home page, do we recommend that the story titles and short teaser
blurbs be encased in a list item and the group of stories be marked up as a
list? This would help people know how many stories there are, why don't we
do this? Or even within a story, there may be nine paragraphs that are
related information that is supposed to be presented in an ordered fashion -
perhaps we need to put each paragraph into a list item and make the story an
ordered list? Of course, I'm being deliberately difficult but I think that
we may be overstating the importance of embedding simple sets of links into
semantic lists and running the risk of creating an unnecessarily verbose
audio UI for audio users.

Looking around, people that you'd think would be in tune with end-user needs
seem perfectly content without using OL or UL for sets of links...

Freedom Scientific's navigation bar:
<p class="navp"><a href="/default.asp"> Home </a> <img
src="/images/vline.gif" alt=""><a href="/product-portal.asp" > Products
</a><img src="/images/vline.gif" alt="" ><a href="/purchase.asp"> Purchase
</a><img src="/images/vline.gif" alt=""><a href="/support.asp"> Support
</a><img src="/images/vline.gif" alt=""><a href="/training.asp"> Training
</a><img src="/images/vline.gif" alt=""><a href="/about/about.asp"> About Us
</a><img src="/images/vline.gif" alt=""><a href="/about/vision-facts.asp">
Low Vision Facts </a></p>

GW-Micro's navbar:
<A HREF="#mainHeadingTitle" STYLE="position: absolute; left: -1000px;
font-size: 0px;">Skip to Main Content</A><A CLASS="navBarLink"
HREF="/Window-Eyes" onMouseOver="this.style.color='#230E75';"
onMouseOut="this.style.color='#FFFFFF';" >Window-Eyes</A>&nbsp;<IMG
SRC="/images/white_bullet.gif" ALT="" ALIGN="bottom">&nbsp;<A
CLASS="navBarLink" HREF="/Notetakers"
onMouseOver="this.style.color='#230E75';"
onMouseOut="this.style.color='#FFFFFF';" >Notetakers</A>&nbsp;<IMG
SRC="/images/white_bullet.gif" ALT="" ALIGN="bottom">&nbsp;<A
CLASS="navBarLink" HREF="/DAISY_Readers"
onMouseOver="this.style.color='#230E75';"
onMouseOut="this.style.color='#FFFFFF';" >DAISY Readers</A>&nbsp;<IMG
SRC="/images/white_bullet.gif" ALT="" ALIGN="bottom">&nbsp;<A
CLASS="navBarLink" HREF="/Braille_Displays"
onMouseOver="this.style.color='#230E75';"
onMouseOut="this.style.color='#FFFFFF';" >Braille Displays</A>&nbsp;<IMG
SRC="/images/white_bullet.gif" ALT="" ALIGN="bottom">&nbsp;<A
CLASS="navBarLink" HREF="/Low_Vision"
onMouseOver="this.style.color='#230E75';"
onMouseOut="this.style.color='#FFFFFF';" >Low Vision</A>&nbsp;<IMG
SRC="/images/white_bullet.gif" ALT="" ALIGN="bottom">&nbsp;<A
CLASS="navBarLink" HREF="/Support" onMouseOver="this.style.color='#230E75';"
onMouseOut="this.style.color='#FFFFFF';" >Support</A>&nbsp;<IMG
SRC="/images/white_bullet.gif" ALT="" ALIGN="bottom">&nbsp;<A
CLASS="navBarLink" HREF="/Training"
onMouseOver="this.style.color='#230E75';"
onMouseOut="this.style.color='#FFFFFF';" >Training</A>

National Federation of the Blind navbar:
<div id="HomeMenu"><a
href="http://www.nfb.org/nfb/About_the_NFB.asp?SnID=1950147763"><img
src="/images/nfb/Template/NFBHome_About.gif" alt="About NFB" width="128"
height="38" border="0"></a><img
src="/images/nfb/Template/NFBHome_MeniDivider.gif" width="1" height="38"
alt="Line"><a
href="http://www.nfb.org/nfb/Info_About_Vision_Loss_For.asp?SnID=1950147763"><img
src="/images/nfb/Template/NFBHome_Information.gif" alt="Information About
Vision Loss For" width="169" height="38" border="0"></a><img
src="/images/nfb/Template/NFBHome_MeniDivider.gif" width="1" height="38"
alt="Line"><a href="http://www.nfb.org/nfb/Members.asp?SnID=1950147763"><img
src="/images/nfb/Template/NFBHome_Members.gif" alt="Members" width="103"
height="38" border="0"></a><img
src="/images/nfb/Template/NFBHome_MeniDivider.gif" width="1" height="38"
alt="Line"><a
href="http://www.nfb.org/nfb/Resources.asp?SnID=1950147763"><img
src="/images/nfb/Template/NFBHome_Resources.gif" alt="Resources" width="117"
height="38" border="0"></a><img
src="/images/nfb/Template/NFBHome_MeniDivider.gif" width="1" height="38"
alt="Line"><a
href="http://www.nfb.org/nfb/Products_and_Technology.asp?SnID=1950147763"><img
src="/images/nfb/Template/NFBHome_Products.gif" alt="Products and
Technology" width="114" height="38" border="0"></a><img
src="/images/nfb/Template/NFBHome_MeniDivider.gif" width="1" height="38"
alt="Line"><a
href="http://www.nfb.org/nfb/Publications.asp?SnID=1950147763"><img
src="/images/nfb/Template/NFBHome_Publications.gif" alt="Publications"
width="127" height="38" border="0"></a></div>

American Council of the Blind nav:
<p><font size="-2">
[<A HREF="index.html">ACB Home</A> |

<A HREF="profile.html">About ACB</A> |
<A HREF="washington/index.html">Washington Connection</A> |
<A HREF="magazine/index.html">Braille Forum</A> |
<A
HREF="http://acb.org/store/index.php?option=com_content&;view=article&id=11&Itemid=14">Donate
to ACB</A> |
<br>
<A HREF="affiliates/index.html">Affiliates</A> |
<A HREF="resources/index.html">Helpful Resources</A> |

<a href="conference/index.html">Conference and Convention</a> |
<a href="http://acb.org/store/index.html">ACB Store</a> ]
</font></p>

Worth noting that AFB and RNIB both use lists widely.

On Zeldman.com, there are items that seem like lists, but are not marked up
as such:
e.g. "Filed under: A Book Apart, A List Apart, content, content strategy,
Design, E-Books, editorial, Education, wordpress"

Same thing on the Yahoo! Accessibility blog:
"Tags: assistive technology, Closed Captions, Deaf, hard of hearing, sean
zdenek, Television"

My gut is that we are calling things lists when the design aspects of web
development work make it easy to do so, and that the connection to what
users need is not clearly identified. I'd really like to see a description
of what content types belong in lists and to what level of complexity an
author should pursue in achieving that goal. Until we have that, when I see
a set of links that are marked up inline within a simple paragraph I can't
justify calling it a 1.3.1 failure.

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe Systems

<EMAIL REMOVED>
http://twitter.com/awkawk
http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility