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Thread: Re: Business Benefits of Access-for-All Design

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From: Terence de Giere
Date: Wed, Nov 27 2002 8:52PM
Subject: Re: Business Benefits of Access-for-All Design
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The page http://www.ideal-group.org/World_Bank/index.asp (Business
Benefits of Access-for-All Design) has some problems: the server is set
to a mime type of text/plain instead of text/html. This page displays OK
in Internet Explorer, but other browsers display it as HTML code, not a
rendered web page.

Netscape 7, Lynx 2.8.4, and the W3C Amaya browser 6.4 all displayed
plain text. (I am rebuilding my computer after a crash and do not have
all my browsers reinstalled but three out of the four failing to display
this page as rendered HTML is a problem!). The page also uses the
Windows 1252 character set rather than the ISO 8859-1 character set.
HTML pages on this server appear to have the correct mime type set, but
ASP pages do not. I think this ASP page was saved from another server
since the server here is a UNIX machine running Apache. It should work
OK if the .asp extension is changed to .htm or .html. If the URL is
typed in as http://www.ideal-group.org/World_Bank/ the page renders OK
in the other browsers.

This is a point Jukka Korpela brought up a few days ago on the forum
(#213), that it does not matter what mime type is specified for the page
in the meta element, the server's setting will normally determine how a
page is rendered. The Internet Explorer browser seems to be an exception
here. I have had this problem with servers where the CSS files are given
the mime type of text/plain instead of text/css, and browsers like
Netscape 7 will not think it is a CSS file, but an ordinary *.txt file
and not format the page linked to it.

Just another detail that affects accessibility, even for visual users,
not typically mentioned in accessibility guidelines.

Terence de Giere
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Subject:
Business Benefits of Access-for-All Design
From:
"Michael R. Burks" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Date:
Wed, 27 Nov 2002 11:41:56 -0500
To:
< = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >


All,

for those with an interest, this is an updated version of Steve Jacobs
paper....the original was great! This one is better!

"Business Benefits of Access-for-All Design." The updated content appears
as follows:
http://www.ideal-group.org/World_Bank/index.asp


Sincerely,

Mike Burks




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From: Holly Marie
Date: Thu, Nov 28 2002 1:17AM
Subject: Re: Business Benefits of Access-for-All Design
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From: "Terence de Giere" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >



| The page http://www.ideal-group.org/World_Bank/index.asp (Business
| Benefits of Access-for-All Design) has some problems: the server is
set
| to a mime type of text/plain instead of text/html. This page displays
OK
| in Internet Explorer, but other browsers display it as HTML code, not
a
| rendered web page.

I wonder if this is on purpose? [humor re MS here]
It looks to be a generated piece from some document to html type by MS
applications[FP5].
I do not quite recall ever seeing Pargraphs wrapped in B - *Bold* tags
before and wonder if that is the MS conversion for Headers? Nesting may
be an issue, too?


| Netscape 7, Lynx 2.8.4, and the W3C Amaya browser 6.4 all displayed
| plain text. (I am rebuilding my computer after a crash and do not have
| all my browsers reinstalled but three out of the four failing to
display
| this page as rendered HTML is a problem!).

I needed to look in my IE5.5 and other browsers to see what else could
be seen.

On WinOS
Opera 5.0x, Opera 6.0x, IE5.5 all display the page fine, no html is
showing. [index.asp looked same as */ no index file* listed in URI]
Netscape4.78, Moz 1.0 final - display the html on the topside instead of
converting or showing the HTML document correctly.

Now if running opera, could a person devise a user sheet for a page such
as this and apply their own rules, colors, fonts, etc.., making it
whatever is preferred? I see the plain nature of the document an issue
with visual users, and depending on who this document is targetted
for[business people etc] - it may be a bit overly plain?

I wonder if a user sheet would override any inline styles If not, and
because the styles are inline, the inline styles could present another
problem area[NOTE: I do not believe that would be a problem with this
document and its inline styles, because they look to be for returns, or
white spacing.]


|The page also uses the
| Windows 1252 character set rather than the ISO 8859-1 character set.

I think that windows 1252 set is still fine for HTML 4 trans and older.
And I believe if there is no DTD in the page or source, many browsers
may be displaying or treating a document as an HTML4.0 transitional
piece and render in backwards quirks mode.

| HTML pages on this server appear to have the correct mime type set,
but
| ASP pages do not. I think this ASP page was saved from another server
| since the server here is a UNIX machine running Apache. It should work
| OK if the .asp extension is changed to .htm or .html. If the URL is
| typed in as http://www.ideal-group.org/World_Bank/ the page renders OK
| in the other browsers.

That should work fine.

holly






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