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Re: Making Discussion Forums Accessible

for

From: Julian Voelcker
Date: Jul 9, 2003 5:17PM

Hi Tim,

Many thanks for the feedback.

> Let me see if I understand this. The page consists of 2 sections. One
> section is a listing of all the messages. The other section is a view of an
> individual message.

To give you a better idea I have posted a screen shot to
http://www.charityskills.org/forums.gif.

The top half of the main part of the screen lists the messages in threaded
order. New ones are highlighted.

We are actually tidying this up to remove the table borders, message ids and
actions.

The data is currently displayed in a table with a new row for each message
although we are considering moving over to CSS styled nested lists.

Clicking on a message title will display the message in the bottom half of the
screen, otherwise it provides the new message form, as displayed.

This bottom part is going to be upgraded to provide a rich text editor, and
checkboxes for adding the user's signature and requesting email notification
when a message is replied to.

The whole lot is currently held together with a frameset.

When using the system for virtual meetings the users can either opt for the
message listing to be updated automatically when a new message is posted (we
use a hidden frame on a continual refresh to check for new messages and then
some JavaScript to reload the message listing when there is a new message).
Alternatively the user can do it manually by clicking the refresh messages
link in the menu.

> In the message list section, new messages are flagged with a visual
> indicator -- I am assuming that is a graphic or a symbol.

Yes.

> Users sometimes need to follow multiple threads. Some users employ the
> forum for conducting virtual meetings where they need to refresh the view
> regularly and locate new messages.

Yes.

> It is too bad that neither HTML nor XHTML make any provisions for a
> multicolumn listbox. That might fix this situation rather easily.

I can't quite see how, there is no real difference between listing in a list
box and listing in a page, bar the screen space used.

> My first suggestion would be to structure the page well. I would suggest
> giving each major section a header using an H1 or H2 tag. The message list
> I would suggest making a table. You might even want to consider using some
> structure for the invidiual mail itself, since it will probably even have
> sections to it, such as the addressee information (date, subject, author,
> etc.) and a message body.

I think that we are doing that already.

> This will help people who use AT that allows them to move through the
> structure of a page.

OK

> You could also then add "skip" links. I do have an idea that either is
> really good or totally unworkable. Instead of just placing "skip" links at
> the top of the page, why not set up an access key for each section? I
> cannot recall at the moment what the restrictions are for the ACCESSKEY
> attribute. However, perhaps you could set up an access key that would take
> the user directly to a section or sub-section. Of course, you will most
> likely need to figure a good way to communicate what the access keys are to
> the users.

We have considered using Access Keys, but there appear to be too many
conflicts with different browser/AT applications to implement them so they are
really useful. If we do use them we will follow the UK government guidelines.


> Regarding the message list and the new message indicator -- another or
> additional method for clearly indicating which messages are new might be to
> seperate them from the others.

Yes, I have thought about that, but then they would be out of context. There
could be several conversations going on at once and the average user may only
be taking part in a fraction of these. I suppose listing the messages with
the subjects might help, however the message threads generally aren't linear
so it would be easy to loose track.

> Instead of having a single message list, you could have a seperate section
> listing just "New Messages" or "Recent Messages." You could even reorganize
> the message list section by having the new message sub-section at the top
> with the "old" message list appearing after. If you do that, it might help
> structurally if the two subsections were seperate tables. If the page
> allows the user to sort messages, two tables might also make it possible for
> users to sort the messages in different ways that might be useful for them.

See above.

> I have other ideas, but they would probably require you to make changes to
> components other than just the user interface.

OK, hopefully with the better description above you should have a better
understanding of the problem.

The annoying this is that the current structure works well for people that
don't need assistive technology. The upgrades mentioned in the description
should actually make it easier for them as it more closely resembles the
average email program.

I really would be grateful with some help with this, every change I can think
of to make it more accessible generally makes it less usable for others.

Cheers,

Julian Voelcker
Cirencester, United Kingdom



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