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Re: Evaluating accessibility level for managers

for

From: Emma Duke-Williams
Date: Jun 21, 2006 6:10PM

On 6/17/06, Rainer Wagener < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Hi Jon,
>
> let me first state: I'm not very much in favor of automatic testing
> tools.
> Especially when a site I'm responsible for does not pass 100% ;-)
>
My initial reaction was the same as Rainer's ... I was somewhat
struggling to work out why I'd failed on somethings ... till I
realised I'd put the wrong URL in & got the University's 404 page!

There are only two things wrong, the search box label that I'm still
trying to sort out ..the defeatist in me says "you're the only person
who uses it - remove it & use Google's site search when you're looking
for a post" ; the completist in me says "Get it sorted, don't worry
about it looking weird - who's going to care" The other thing that's
missing is the language declaration - I'll have to check the word
press template, as I'd have thought I ought to be able to add it.

It's a danger though to rely on auto-testing I think - to start with,
I'm sure that my header logo doens't give enough contrast with the
background - and it's not, as far as I can tell, alterted me to the
fact that I've got audio feeds in there - I'd have liked it to at
least ask if I've checked that a transcript is available, if
appropriate.

The other thing that I feel strongly should be included - even though
I know that I'd fail, would be checks to find the readability. We've
got a lot of students who are dyslexic (none are blind), so ensuring
that I use accessible language is actually of far more importance to
me than a label on a search box that few use.

As a tool, though, it's nice & clear & quick! (Does it work on off
line pages so that you can test them before they even see the light of
day?)

Emma

--
Blog: http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/