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Re: WAVE 3.0 alpha

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From: Holly Marie
Date: Dec 7, 2002 9:00AM


----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Bohman"

| Although it is still very much a work in progress, I'd like to make
the
| WAVE 3.0 alpha available to the public.
|
| You can find it at www.wave.webaim.org.
| For those who have never used the WAVE before, it has a slightly
| different philosophy than some of the other tools out there. It
doesn't
| give you a list of errors. It displays icons in the contetxt of the
page
| itself which show you where various elements are in the page, such as
| layout tables, image alt text, form labels and so on. Not all of the
| icons represent errors. In fact, icons are placed in the document in
the
| places where you did things right too. This allows you to evaluate the
| effectiveness of your work in the context of the page itself. For
| example, the WAVE prints out your alt text right next to the image.
This
| allows you to judge whether the alt text is appropriate for the image.
|
| But perhaps it would just be easier to explain if you took a look for
| yourself, so I invite you to do just that.
|
| You may want to read "What's New in WAVE 3.0 Alpha?" at
| http://www.wave.webaim.org/new_in_3_0.htm. We haven't yet completed
our
| documentation, but this will give you an idea of many of the changes
| implemented so far.
|
| See also the explanation of icons at
| http://www.wave.webaim.org:8081/wave/explanation.htm (this also is a
| work in progress)
|
| We invite your feedback, comments, bug reports and ideas on all
aspects
| of the project.


Hi Paul,

This is exciting to see the work done on the WAVE and the increased
features for the check or testing.
I popped this off to someone who is also blind, and naturally their
question was directed at how effiecient or usable it might be for these
users working on the Internet or Web, or I imagine even those who work
in web design and development.

So, I popped the WAVE link into Opera, turned off all the images and
style[I do not have a lynx browser on my desktop right now] and ran a
test on a page with forms set in tables. The text only delivery seems
fine for the WAVE and it led me to another thought or idea, a possible
suggestion....

This tool is nice in how it linearizes page content and identifies
semantic markup. It is also nice how it identifies other items [bold,
emphasis, points out things that may show in the page like javascript,
etc...].

I wonder how hard it might be to offer up a quick link switch for those
that would like to use this test or check in text only or no CSS or
Image mode? It may be nice to offer this ability for those that may be
overly distracted by many images or colors? [ADD, LDD, other possible
attention situations, or pure choice]

I think that option might be a good one... Two ways to view this check
or test?

One other thought, and this is hard because color is an issue with those
having various types of color blindness. I am wondering if there was any
distinguishable way to make errors more outstanding than other items.
Again it is a stuggle to come up with a good way. If you X through a
box, someone may not be able to read the box or see the image clearly.
Maybe an X by something that needs to be fixed, Checkmark is ambiguous,
could mean check this item closer or good this is done... Star may mean
good, but I see we run into some clear understandings on non color based
symbology with Good, Needs Checking, or Error.

holly

holly



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