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From: Angela French
Date: Mon, Aug 29 2011 3:33PM
Subject: examples of accessible document downloads
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Hello,
I would be especially grateful if you might send me a URL or two of your favorite method for representing the download of different document types on a web page. As a developer, this might be your preferred way of coding for the presentation of document downloads, or as a user of a screen reader, this might be a site that you feel presents documents for download in the best way.

A site that I am working on has no less than 10 ways of presenting documents for download. Some are accessible, others not. I can understand the logic behind some of them, but the content creators knew nothing about accessibility. So now I am trying to come up with a standard way (or a few ways) to represent docs-for-download on our site.

I am particularly looking for complex presentations - for example reports that might have the same title, but available for many individual years.

Thank you in advance,


Angela French
Internet Specialist
State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
360-704-4316
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
http://www.checkoutacollege.com<;http://www.checkoutacollege.com/>;

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Mon, Aug 29 2011 3:54PM
Subject: Re: examples of accessible document downloads
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To offer up an opinion.
For single downloadable files on web pages I prefer downloads
presented as buttons rather than links.
The word "download" should be the first word in the name
of the button"download document x".
Often I have to search back and forth in web pages, since I am not
sure if the link is a download link or just a link that takes me to a
place with further info about said document (msdn I find very
difficult, or used to, think it is getting more organized now).
Example of a very confusing page (at least for screen rreaders) is
www.filehippo.com
This is a collection of freeware and shareware software, baed on
categories, very useful site.

You have to click on the developers name to get to an area where you
can download the installation, but this is not obvious.

When you expect user to just choose one file from a list of
files/formats, You could present documents for download as a list
with a descriptive title
(Reports for years 1992 to present (doc), with a combobox and a
"download" button.
For multiple format reports I prefer the format in parenths
Report for 1998 (doc)
Report for 1998 (pdf)
I don't have a website off the top of my head that uses ths format,
but I can find one.

It is probably very politically incorrect, and I am not saying I ever
use this page, but www.piratebay.org (torrent site) has a pretty nice
and clear interface for downloading files.
Do a search for something like an artist, and see the table of results
(of course you may get a pop up). There is file info and then a link
that says "download" right next to it (at least as screen reader reads
it). Whereas I prefer download links to be actual buttons, this is as
ok presentation as well. One column presents the file info, the next
(arrow down if you use an SR) is a link that says "download", so there
is no ambiguity as to what filename the word "download" refers to.
The following column lists who uploaded said file and its size, and I
find this helpful too (replace "uploaded by" with file format).
This way you can offer additional file information for those who want
to know the size and file formats (to some size matters, not to
others), but you are not creating overly long link texts. Of course
looking at this site is fully legal, as long as you do not download
copyrighted matirial from it.

Hope this has given you something to work with.
Cheers
-B


On 8/29/11, Angela French < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Hello,
> I would be especially grateful if you might send me a URL or two of your
> favorite method for representing the download of different document types on
> a web page. As a developer, this might be your preferred way of coding for
> the presentation of document downloads, or as a user of a screen reader,
> this might be a site that you feel presents documents for download in the
> best way.
>
> A site that I am working on has no less than 10 ways of presenting documents
> for download. Some are accessible, others not. I can understand the logic
> behind some of them, but the content creators knew nothing about
> accessibility. So now I am trying to come up with a standard way (or a few
> ways) to represent docs-for-download on our site.
>
> I am particularly looking for complex presentations - for example reports
> that might have the same title, but available for many individual years.
>
> Thank you in advance,
>
>
> Angela French
> Internet Specialist
> State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
> 360-704-4316
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> http://www.checkoutacollege.com<;http://www.checkoutacollege.com/>;
>
>

From: deborah.kaplan
Date: Mon, Aug 29 2011 6:18PM
Subject: Re: examples of accessible document downloads
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Angela,

As a sighted voice/keyboard-only user, I vastly prefer links to buttons, because that lets me control how I want to interact with the documents via the context menu. For example, I can tell my broswer to give me a list of links in the page, edit that list, and download them in a batch, or save the URLs for later if I'm not in a good place to download (eg. not my computer). I dislike javascript based downloaders for the same reason: I can't manipulate and use the download URL.

If you look at this site -- <http://archiveofourown.org/works/244621>; -- there's a "download" link which, when selected, expands to a list of links providing the four download options: "MOBI, EPUB, PDF, HTML". I like that for a page with one download, multiple formats. (I just tested that link with NVDA and had issues with it, though I do know at least one JAWS user who is happy with it. So it's not perfect.) For me, as a voice and keyboard user, that's perfect.

The internet archive works similarly, as at <http://www.archive.org/details/1872sanskriten00moniuoft>;. Notice the section under the heading level one titled "View the Book". Each available format is a link with the format name as the link text.

Those are both the simplest case, of course. For more complicated lists, as you request, I still prefer links, ideally with unique names (so I can dictate the name directly), as at <http://www.nyc.gov/html/dob/html/guides/weekly.shtml>;.

(When looking for examples I found some *terrible* US government pages. Ugh, TIGER data is hard to grab. Standardise on a set of best practices, US government!)

-Deborah

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Tue, Aug 30 2011 8:57AM
Subject: Re: examples of accessible document downloads
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Hi Deborah

I did not know about links vs buttons for your situation. Thanks for
enlightening me. :)
Whichever method is chosen, I just want to make sure it is made clear
out of context that the link/button being used is to download the
file, as a screen reader user that's really all i ask.


On 8/30/11, = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Angela,
>
> As a sighted voice/keyboard-only user, I vastly prefer links to buttons,
> because that lets me control how I want to interact with the documents via
> the context menu. For example, I can tell my broswer to give me a list of
> links in the page, edit that list, and download them in a batch, or save the
> URLs for later if I'm not in a good place to download (eg. not my computer).
> I dislike javascript based downloaders for the same reason: I can't
> manipulate and use the download URL.
>
> If you look at this site -- <http://archiveofourown.org/works/244621>; --
> there's a "download" link which, when selected, expands to a list of links
> providing the four download options: "MOBI, EPUB, PDF, HTML". I like that
> for a page with one download, multiple formats. (I just tested that link
> with NVDA and had issues with it, though I do know at least one JAWS user
> who is happy with it. So it's not perfect.) For me, as a voice and keyboard
> user, that's perfect.
>
> The internet archive works similarly, as at
> <http://www.archive.org/details/1872sanskriten00moniuoft>;. Notice the
> section under the heading level one titled "View the Book". Each available
> format is a link with the format name as the link text.
>
> Those are both the simplest case, of course. For more complicated lists, as
> you request, I still prefer links, ideally with unique names (so I can
> dictate the name directly), as at
> <http://www.nyc.gov/html/dob/html/guides/weekly.shtml>;.
>
> (When looking for examples I found some *terrible* US government pages. Ugh,
> TIGER data is hard to grab. Standardise on a set of best practices, US
> government!)
>
> -Deborah
>