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RE: Baby Question re separator (greater than and pipe)

for

From: smithj7
Date: Apr 17, 2006 12:10PM

Thanks for bring me back to reality with the question: "How many of your
visitors (and people from your parent organisation) visit pages with
stylesheets turned off?" I hadn't thought about that. I guess I'm over
analysis some of the issues.

The "now at" issue came up for me, because the perl code I only allowed
for a "global" alt. I finally got some responses from a couple
employees that used speech. They agreed that the empty alt was the best
idea.

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Patrick H.
Lauke
Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2006 11:51 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Baby Question re separator (greater than and pipe)


smithj7 wrote:

> I actually liked the idea of using a border in the css style sheet for

> a separator of links in my required footer (look of footer established

> by Parent Organization). Worked fine, till I checked site without css

> style sheet. Text without separators for sited persons won't be
> approved by my parent organization.

How many of your visitors (and people from your parent organisation)
visit pages with stylesheets turned off?

If things are adequately separated in structure (e.g. using a list for
each individual link, and then styling them as inline with a small
border as separator) then even with styling turned off the separation is

more than obvious, and should satisfy sighted users with and without
stylesheets alike.

> One of the my co-workers that uses
> speech suggested using a graphic (surrounded by white space) as a
> separate, but with the alt being the double quote with no speech on
> graphic.

But that would be, from an idealist's point of view, sullying the markup

to achieve a visual effect...


> I've also read up about the separators for bread crumbs.

This argument comes and goes, with different factions, but: a breadcrumb

trail can be seen as an ordered list of steps, so can be marked up as an

OL. then, you can style it using whatever visual separator you want (as
a border, non-repeating background graphic, etc).

> I like the
> idea of using a graphic rather than the greater than symbol. I liked
> the suggestion of "Now at". But should I put the "Now at" label on
> each of the bread crumb separators? Seems like that could also be a
> pain for a speech user: e.g. Home link Now at Business Enterprises
> link Now at Business Opportunities link Now at Facility 533
> Announcement.

That wouldn't make any sense. "Now at" should really only be said once,
surely? *If* you're using an image as a separator, the ALT should either

get out of the way completely, i.e. be empty, IMHO.

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke
___________
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