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FW: Accessibility of dotNET

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From: julian.rickards
Date: Apr 23, 2003 10:49AM


Lisa wrote:

> This HTML does not appear to be fully accessible or 508 compliant (at
least to me).
> For example, it seems that SPAN and DIV tags are generated quite a bit,
and
> in places that prevent the use of LABEL tags for form controls. The SPAN
> and DIV tags are also using absolute positioning. I've included an
example
> at the end of my note.

To me, it looks mostly fine with a couple of exceptions.

Firstly, measurements should be scalable, in other words, positions and
dimensions of divs and spans, etc, should use em or % (em may be the
easiest), not px (pixels).

Secondly, there is JavaScript in the page. What would happen if JavaScript
was disabled? Would essential functionality be lost? If not, then the
JavaScript may be left in. If the JavaScript functions are essential, then
there is a problem.

Thirdly, it is possible, because of absolute positioning, to create divs in
random order because the absolute positioning would then position the
information in correct order on the screen. It is unlikely that this is the
case in your page but I suggest that you scan the text in the code to ensure
that the order of the divs and text in the code is the same as the order on
the page. An alternate solution is to either use a CSS-incapable browser or
one in which CSS can be disabled such as Opera 7 (user mode). If the order
of the information is correct without CSS, then you are ok.

Fourthly, it is not clear to me but part of the code may be invalid. The
code shows a couple of <br></br>. There is no </br> in HTML 4 (which is what
the DocType states) although this construct may be valid for XHTML but your
DocType does not state that you are using XHTML. This may not be a true
accessibility issue.

Just my 2 cents.

Jules


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