E-mail List Archives
Thread: Accessible .Net forms
Number of posts in this thread: 3 (In chronological order)
From: Jill Lenz
Date: Wed, Sep 22 2004 11:26AM
Subject: Accessible .Net forms
No previous message | Next message →
Hello all,
Anyone have experience checking pages complied from Microsoft .Net for
accessibility?
A group of programmers in my college asked for a web accessibility
presentation from me. They are just switching from coding in Cold Fusion
Studio to Microsoft .Net. I know nothing about MS .Net as I'm not a
programmer. I typically use Dreamweaver for creating web pages.
I asked for a .Net sample to evaluate. A programmer compiled this page
at http://maat.cvmbs.colostate.edu/sop/sopmain.aspx
I was told "The only thing that works right now is go to the
Administrative Functions menu, then click Create a New Group. You can
add the info and click the 'continue' button but it doesn't go anywhere
right now (it just stores stuff in the db)." So there's not a lot of
functionality built in yet, just something preliminary for me to review.
I tried running the page thru http://validator.w3.org to first check the
markup of this main page. It seems the online validators can't handle
the .aspx pages.
How can I validate online? I tried this method but maybe there's a
better solution . . . I saved the .aspx file as .htm to my desktop and
then was able to validate at http://validator.w3.org. But I'm going to
run into problems with validators such as Bobby or Cynthia Says that can
only validate a URI, not a file from my hard drive and I don't have
access privileges to the programmers site, although I could physcially
work with them in person to have them upload the saved .htm from .aspx
files to their site for validation if that's the procedure we need to
follow. Seems clumsy.
Is there a better method?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks, Jill
P.S. Here's a rough outline of topics I plan to cover with them. Any
suggestions?
Web Accessibility for Programmers 9/23/04
Code in XHTML 1.0 Transitional or Strict
-Per recommendations by the W3C
-More on why at http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2004/xhtml-faq
-Tool to help convert and identify areas of concern
http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/
Validate Mark Up
-Password-protected pages produce
From: julian.rickards
Date: Wed, Sep 22 2004 12:04PM
Subject: Re: Accessible .Net forms
← Previous message | Next message →
I am getting an error indicating the page you refer to can't be found. Is it
behind a firewall? If so, then you can't test it with one of the online
validators. However, what you could do is to display the page in your
browser, save the page as something.html on your computer and then upload
the page to a validator.
-----------------------------------------------
Julian Rickards
A/Digital Publications Distribution Coordinator
Publication Services Section,
Ministry of Northern Development and Mines,
Vox: 705-670-5608 / Fax: 705-670-5960
From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Wed, Sep 22 2004 12:14PM
Subject: Re: Accessible .Net forms
← Previous message | No next message
> I tried running the page thru http://validator.w3.org to first check
> the markup of this main page. It seems the online validators can't
> handle
> the .aspx pages.
Let me preface this by saying I'm by no means an expert on .net. My
background is graphic/web design and I've spent the last year or so
developing in .net. At this stage, I'm at the point somewhere in-between
'hack' and 'seasoned .net developer' ;o)
That said, .net is not very standards compliant nor accessibility minded.
Some of the main issues I've come across:
* Postbacks
In .net, a page can have multiple states. To change the state of a page,
you'd often use postbacks, which are triggered automatically on form
submissions (you're basically reloading the same page with different
variables). VisualStudio.net also lets you make pretty much any action
trigger a post back. The catch is, outside of form submits, any trigger must
be activated via javascript on the front end. On our new public site, I
decided this was unacceptable and, as such, had to code workarounds where
all 'state' information is sent back via querystrings.
* Default webcontrols
When using VisualStudio.net, you can whip up fairly quick interfaces using
many of .net's default controls. These are things like Datagrids and
Datalists. The problem is that these all tend to make your basic of tables,
and often invalid tables. There's no way to add TH tags, etc. very easily.
* Validation
Most of the built-in validation controls work very nicely on the server
side. The client-side stuff tends to be IE-centric javascript. Either skip
client-side validation or look at writing your own.
* XHTML
..net, at this point, when using vs.net, has no concept of valid xhtml
markup. Very frustrating.
Apparently, many of these issues are being addressed in the new versions of
..net and VS.net that will be coming out. Also, you can get around any of
these issues provided your developers write code to get around it. The main
catch is that, by default, VS.net does little to assist the developer in
writing fully compliant markup.
> How can I validate online? I tried this method but maybe there's a
> better solution . . . I saved the .aspx file as .htm to my desktop and
> then was able to validate at http://validator.w3.org. But I'm going to
> run into problems with validators such as Bobby or Cynthia Says that
> can only validate a URI, not a file from my hard drive and I don't
> have
Well, you can't validate ASPX using an HTML validator, so what you are doing
is just fine. You could just upload these pages if you'd prefer, but I'm not
sure why a local validator won't work for you.
Again, I don't want to call myself anyone resembling a .net expert, so
someone else please jump in and correct anything I've said if need be.
-Darrel