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From: Michael Roush
Date: Mon, Dec 05 2005 12:20PM
Subject: WebBlender Accessibility
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I am presently at a regional technology conference in Dayton, Ohio, where I just finished a presentation on accessible web design. The session before mine was done by the regional representative for an organization called tech4learning that has a product called WebBlender which bills itself as (another) easy-to-use get-your-site-up-now design package. I always try to find out what I can about the packages that are being marketed to schools around where I live in the field of web design, so that on the rare occasions that I get questions about them, I can maybe have something intelligent to say about them.

In their pring catalog, the description of WebBlender includes the following: WebBlender sites adhere to accessibility guidelines and standards, ensuring that your site will be available to the widest possible audience. I asked the rep about this after the session, and he had no better information about it than that. I have sent off an e-mail to their tech support asking for some more specific information about what standards they mean.

I may also be getting a testing edition of the software to use myself, so that I can check for myself how accessible the content is. Sometime this week, I may just download the trial edition and see what sort of code it produces.

I am wondering if anyone else has any experience with this package in particular. I realize, its very easy to be suspicious if not downright scoff-y at the claims of wysiwyg editors to produce accessible code, but Im reserving judgment at least until I actually see code that the package produces.

Meanwhile, Ill let you all know if/when I get a response from their tech folks.


Michael D. Roush, Technology Coordinator
Hopewell SERRC

From: Michael D. Roush
Date: Tue, Dec 06 2005 11:00AM
Subject: Re: WebBlender Accessibility
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Michael Roush wrote:
>
> In their print catalog, the description of WebBlender includes the following: "WebBlender sites adhere to accessibility guidelines and standards, ensuring that your site will be available to the widest possible audience". I have sent off an e-mail to their tech support asking for some more specific information about what standards they mean.

Here is the response I got:
---
"WebBlender features that help users with accessibility standards are
primarily features that allow WebBlender pages to be used with screen
readers.

- Alt tags can be used and edited for all graphics.
- Page titles can be edited.
- Text in text objects is standard text that can be read by a screen
reader.

Text-to-speech can be added for one text object per page. *Since only one
sound is allowed to be added to a page in HTML.

WebBlender allows users to design pages in any way they wish - changing text
color, style, backgrounds, buttons, etc. The software does not check for
any accessibility issues that may be related to design or layout of sites
that are created.

You also mentioned 'wysiwyg' tools in your message. By default, WebBlender
pages are designed to scale. That is, if you resize your browser window the
page elements will resize to fit the viewable area."
---

Not nearly what I was hoping for. It almost seems to me that
'accessibility' is more of a marketing angle for them in their catalog
than a real part of the software development. And I am a bit puzzled as
to their consideration of being able to add a background sound to a page
as a "text to speech" object as an accessibility feature.

Michael