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Thread: RE: Movement in pages
Number of posts in this thread: 5 (In chronological order)
From: Frank Gaine
Date: Wed, May 01 2002 9:22AM
Subject: RE: Movement in pages
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mark,
thanks for your reply. what do you think the situation would be with
a purely decorative Flash-based element that moves but does not contain
any essential information?
Would the design have to omit this feature in order to comply with
this WAI checkpoint (even if it were made accessible according to
Macromedia's guidelines).
Regards
Frank Gaine
At Wednesday, 1 May 2002, you wrote:
>If you have some sort of scrolling text a user may need to freeze
it so they
>can read it. Those with cognitive disabilities may become overwhelmed
and
>not understand fast moving information. Flashing lights or flickering
could
>trigger a seizure for someone with a seizure disorder.
>
>-mark
>
>
From: Mark Bryant
Date: Wed, May 01 2002 10:14AM
Subject: RE: Movement in pages
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Frank,
When looking at your pages and the accessibility of such, I would recommend
sticking to a set of guidelines that meets your orgainization's and
audience's needs. You have Section 508, W3C-WAI, IBM, and other guidelines
available to choose from, yet they might be contradictive. As this case
with Macromedia vs WAI. I wouldn't read too much into some of the
guidelines, because that is what they are, just guidelines. Even when you
check pages with different HTML validators, you typically get different
results.
If your flash is purely decorative and the page and is insignificant as far
as content, I would see no problem with keeping it. I would, however, keep
in mind the flicking and the potential cause for triggering seizures.
-mark
From: philip steven lanier
Date: Wed, May 01 2002 10:45AM
Subject: RE: Movement in pages
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I would suggest that the degree to which purely decorative animation is
appropriate depends on the subtly of the animation. If, for instance, it
is a small, unobtrusive arrow that slowly fades in and out, that shouldn't
be a problem. If, however, it is a large banner across the top of the
page that dramatically flashes between black and yellow, forget it! I
agree with Mark Bryant that sticking to a set of guidelines is a good way
to go, but I would also add that understanding the reasons behind the
guidelines is more important than just blindly adhering to a set of
standards. There will alway be cases that are not clearly defined by the
guidelines: some cases in which the guidelines prescribe actions that are
not necessary in a certain situation for accessibility, and other where a
site may be inaccessible but still be in compliance with the guidelines.
That being said, Mark's first email describes fairly well the major
problems that movement on a page can cause. If that does not clarify
enough to make a judgement, I would suggest you look at the WCAG or EITAS
(or other general web accessiblity resources) and and read more on the
rationale behind the guidelines.
-Philip Lanier
University of Washington
On Wed, 1 May 2002, Frank Gaine wrote:
> mark,
>
> thanks for your reply. what do you think the situation would be with
> a purely decorative Flash-based element that moves but does not contain
> any essential information?
>
> Would the design have to omit this feature in order to comply with
> this WAI checkpoint (even if it were made accessible according to
> Macromedia's guidelines).
>
> Regards
> Frank Gaine
>
>
> At Wednesday, 1 May 2002, you wrote:
>
> >If you have some sort of scrolling text a user may need to freeze
> it so they
> >can read it. Those with cognitive disabilities may become overwhelmed
> and
> >not understand fast moving information. Flashing lights or flickering
> could
> >trigger a seizure for someone with a seizure disorder.
> >
> >-mark
> >
> >
From: John Foliot - bytown internet
Date: Thu, May 02 2002 5:07AM
Subject: RE: Movement in pages
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While I am in agreement with the basic thread of this answer (small
decorative is OK, large obtrusive or more importantly MISSION CRITICAL not
OK), I would caution developers on Marks statement about Guidelines.
Increasingly, the W3 Guidelines are being adopted by governments and
organizations as Standards... checkpoints which MUST be adhered to. In
Canada, the Federal Government's Common Look and Feel Standards have applied
the weight of mandated standard to the WAI Priority 1 and 2 Checkpoints ;
the European Union is moving in this direction as well, and countries such
as Australia are modifying and adopting the basic thrust of these guidelines
as law.
Canada: http://www.cio-dpi.gc.ca/clf-upe/index_e.asp
E.U.:
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/topics/citizens/accessibility/index
_en.htm
Australia:
http://www.govonline.gov.au/projects/standards/accessibility.htm
In these instances, interpretation becomes more problematic... one person's
minor transgression may be another's grounds for legal challenge. That may
seem drastic, but the world is full of many people with different agendas.
Unfortunately, in this regard some of the W3C guidelines are vague in their
definition, and often the policy makers (who shoehorn guidelines into
standards) are unaware of these vagaries. This is one of them (also,
defining "blink" (Priority 2 - 7.2) - section 508 caught this one and set
the flash rate (between 2Hz - 55Hz), but what about Section 508 - p; the
timed response. What is "sufficient time"?)
I would suggest then that the final answer lies in the area of judgement
call... who is your site targeted to, and who is it being developed for. If
you are delivering a new or revised site to a private company or individual,
and this is the first foray into accessible design, chances are that any and
all improvements will offset minor issues. If however you are developing
for a government or other public institution (schools/universities, etc.),
then perhaps avoiding this content entirely may prove more prudent. Frank
does not mention how and where his Flash bit is being used, so it's hard to
say what it's final impact may be, but personally, I would probably proceed
with a bit more caution.
As always, JMHO
JF
>
From: Mark Bryant
Date: Fri, May 03 2002 6:32AM
Subject: validation errors on pages with query strings in URL?
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Group,
Most of our pages are dynamic and rely of the query string for displaying
the appropriate information. When running an HTML validation on a page that
may have a link on it like
<a href="examples/page.asp?ID=4">, we typically will get Error: unknown
entity "ID". I know this does not make the page inaccessible, but it this
just a fault of the validator (WDG, W3C) or is there a way to make it
validate if it has query strings?
TIA,
mark
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