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Re: New site -Accessify.com

for

From: Mark Newhouse
Date: Nov 27, 2002 11:44AM

Hi Ian:

> http://www.accessify.com/default.asp
>
> Please take a look, get involved - the site needs some contributorss for
> articles, tutorials and even links.
>
> Hope you like

Nice resource. Thanks for making it easy to find the tools you've already
made available, and for encouraging others to share. I like that you are
doing more than just linking to other sites and articles on the web, but
attempting to create new and compelling content. For that I applaud you, and
wish you luck.

A few issues, however, that you may want to address.

Looking at it on Mac/IE5, on your two "fancier" layouts, the
#maincontenttext DIV is rendered underneath the rest of the page, and the
paragraphs are constrained to a very narrow column with only one or two
words per line. Not sure what is happening with the CSS there. I checked
your XHTML and CSS against the validators, and there were some issues with
both. Fixing them (mostly forgetting to close your <br /> tags in the XHTML)
might fix the problem in IE5/Mac. (I can send a screenshot if you want.)

Also, I'd do away with the splash page and make your default.asp page the
root level page.

And I'd go for even more semantic markup. For example, you use a structure
such as:

<p><strong>Some text that should really be a heading</strong><br />
The rest of the paragraph goes here.</p>

A better structure would be:

<h2>Some text that should really be a heading</h2>
<p>The rest of the paragraph goes here.</p>

And then style the H2s and Ps accordingly. This will greatly enhance
accessibility for those screen readers who like to scan a page by reading
only the headers.

Likewise I'd consider marking up your lists of links as ULs (or OLs) and
styling them the way you'd like them to appear on the page. Again, this will
increase both accessibility and usability for those who use their screen
reader to find lists on the page.

And, increasing the structure in your page actually makes it easier to
style.

I know you didn't ask for a critique, so I hope I haven't overstepped my
bounds here - just trying to be helpful :) and actually, once the IE5/Mac
display issues are cleared up, it is something I'd like to promote on my web
log.

Best,

-- Mark Newhouse
http://realworldstyle.com/
css layouts, tips, tricks and techniques



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