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Thread: questions from a student
Number of posts in this thread: 4 (In chronological order)
From: Glenda
Date: Tue, Jun 22 2004 1:38PM
Subject: questions from a student
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Hi all,
I'm training someone via email on the WCAG and she has asked some questions
that I can't quickly answwer. I am hoping you can enlighten me and save me
from searching for the answers myself. Yes, some may consider that
cheating. I consider it be efficient as I can work on something else as I
await your wisdom!
Queestion: "I just saw another abbreviation on the home page. I prefer to
spell things out because although the terms might be familiar to me, some
people have never been to an AGM. But when it is repeated... I am wondering
if it is identified once on a page, does it have to be
re-identified at every instance?"
My initial response was that according to the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines 1.0, use and to expand the first time they occur
on the page. However, this begs the question, what happens when individuals
using a screen reader doesn't begin reading from the top of the page and
they miss where the abbreviation/acronym was first spelled out? Is this may
be another case where the guidelines don't mesh with reality? Or am I
missing something fundamental when using these attributes?
Question: "The XHTML validation doesn't like any of those non-SGML
characters. Anything that can be done about that, besides avoiding them?"
Question: "During testing for CSS, it passed but got a warning: * Line :
0 font-family: You are encouraged to offer a generic family as a last
alternative. Does this mean identify outside CSS?"
I look forward to your responses, as I'm trying to stay a step ahead of my
student.
Thanks kindly,
Glenda Watson Hyatt
Soaring Eagle Communications
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From: John Foliot - WATS.ca
Date: Tue, Jun 22 2004 2:05PM
Subject: Re: questions from a student
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> Question: "I just saw another abbreviation on the home page. I prefer to
> spell things out because although the terms might be familiar to me, some
> people have never been to an AGM. But when it is repeated... I am
> wondering
> if it is identified once on a page, does it have to be
> re-identified at every instance?"
>
> My initial response was that according to the Web Content Accessibility
> Guidelines 1.0, use and to expand the first time
> they occur
> on the page. However, this begs the question, what happens when
> individuals
> using a screen reader doesn't begin reading from the top of the page and
> they miss where the abbreviation/acronym was first spelled out?
> Is this may
> be another case where the guidelines don't mesh with reality? Or am I
> missing something fundamental when using these attributes?
There has been some debate on this issue. For clarity's sake I expand every
instance of an acronym or abbreviation. Most screen readers *will* start
reading from the top of the page unless specifically directed to a named
anchor or id within a document (a href="foo.html#bar")
>
>
> Question: "The XHTML validation doesn't like any of those non-SGML
> characters. Anything that can be done about that, besides avoiding them?"
use the proper code or named entity. We provide an accessible or the entire
iso8859-1 table version on our site:
http://wats.ca/resources/accessibleiso-8859-1table/58
The definitive reference is part of the XHTML1.0 DTD as a normative part of
the specification.
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/dtds.html#a_dtd_Latin-1_characters
>
>
> Question: "During testing for CSS, it passed but got a warning:
> * Line :
> 0 font-family: You are encouraged to offer a generic family as a last
> alternative. Does this mean identify outside CSS?"
no -
{font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;} or {font-family:
Times, serif;} in other words, specify at least a basic family from:
serif, sans-serif, fantasy, or mono-spaced - allowing user agents to at
least approximate a font family should a specific font not be available
JF
--
John Foliot = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Web Accessibility Specialist / Co-founder of WATS.ca
Web Accessibility Testing and Services
http://www.wats.ca 1.866.932.4878 (North America)
From: Glenda
Date: Tue, Jun 22 2004 2:17PM
Subject: Re: questions from a student
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Thanks John, I owe you one ! How are things at WATS?
Cheers,
Glenda
From: Stephanie Sullivan
Date: Wed, Jun 23 2004 10:14AM
Subject: Re: questions from a student
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On 6/22/04 3:32 PM, "glenda" simply typed the following:
> Question: "During testing for CSS, it passed but got a warning: * Line :
> 0 font-family: You are encouraged to offer a generic family as a last
> alternative. Does this mean identify outside CSS?"
I think John answered all your questions quite nicely... I just wanted to
ask if anyone else has notices some wonky stuff with the CSS validator
lately? It has been saying that any errors are on "Line 0" and thus, I have
to dig through the page to find them...
It seems to happen about every other day. Strange.
Stephanie Sullivan
Co-Author .: "Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 Magic" :. New Riders
CommunityMX Partner :: http://www.communitymx.com/author.cfm?cid=1008
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