Book Outline
350 pages? each chapter 25,000 or more words long? See government guidelines: http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/publications/guidelines/webguidelines/handbook/index.htm Search engines submission tips
Intro:
Why Build Accessible Web Sites?
What is an accessible Web site?
Understanding HTML and accessibilityAccess and Client side technologies
Web browsers
other Internet connected devices: WebTV, PDA's, cellphones
Access technologies
Access and impairment
The How of building an Accessible Web site
Discussion about alt attributes and descriptons for non-text content. see: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/alt.htmlalso: http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/alt/alt-text.html I say:
After publishing my Table Manners article I got an e-mail from Jouni Heikniemi pointing out some problems with my use of the alt attribute for the photographs on the page. To summarise - he suggested I should use empty alt attributes rather than the descriptions I used. He also point me to some good articles on the subjetct, by Jukka Korpela and Alan Flavell.
As a solution to the possible problems created by my use of alt attributes on the Table Manners' article I have added the text 'Decorative image:' followed by a description of the image. I decided not to use an empty alt attribute for the following reasons:
The photos, although mostly decorative are used on occasion to add a comment, or provide a humourous or analogous connections with the text. These are not intended to be obvious and are not essential for understanding of the text. An example would be the stop sign that is the first image on the Table Manners article - in long hand I could be saying "Stop! you shouldn't be using tables for layout", or I might not - the reader may or may not make a connection. By providing some text descriptions of the photo this 'function' is still retained.
It is useful for people browsing with images off to see what a photo is about - and they can do this by reading the alt text. They may want to click to load a particular image they are interested in.
I like to provide as much text on my pages as possible, just in case a search engine robot comes along and decides to add my page to a searchable database.
Some people like to know what they are missing- even if they are browsing with a text only browser.
I take all the photos myself and it makes me happy to provide descriptions of them on my pages. This reason of course is purely selfish and doesn't add a jot to the debate on how to use alt attributes on Web pages. :-)
HTML - what it is and how to use it
Design in Colour
Information about making Adobe Acrobat accessible: http://www.brainstormsandraves.com/2002_01_13_archive.shtml#8700822 Building Accessible Webpages in Dreamweaver: http://spingree.cals.wisc.edu/design/accessibility.htm http://www.joeclark.org/access/ Welcome to Joe Clark[base ']s gateway page for articles, resources, and critiques of media-access issues. I[base ']ve written more critical articles on captioning (and media access generally) than anyone else. Like...? Like interpreting graphics. A Web site may post a picture of a shopping cart, but a screen reader cannot see and interpret that graphic. Or a photograph or illustration may be displayed, but the screen reader lacks the eyes and the mind necessary to look at it and understand it. So what do you do in that case? You turn graphics into words. Wherever you offer a picture, offer a text equivalent, too. In fact, there are at least three ways to make graphic images (of all kinds) accessible in HTML, the underlying coding language in which Web pages are written. 1.You must use an alt text – a few words summing up the image (e.g., “Shopping cart”) that will appear if the browser does not or cannot load graphics. Screen readers can and do read the alt text. This level of access is the shortest, least informative, and simplest. 2.You can optionally add a title to the image that offers a bit more information as to the function of the graphic. In the shopping-cart example, you could add “Check out the items you’ve selected.” In many browsers, the title pops up as a tooltip. 3.For images that cannot be summed up with alt and title alone, you can add a longdesc (long description). It’s a separate file in which you can take as much space as you want to describe the image in words. In this example, the alt text reads “Walker”; the title says “Walker, a font with snap-on serifs by Matthew Carter”; and the longdescription (a separate file) says: The image shows the imaginary word HAMBURGEFONSTIV, a variant of the word HAMBURGEFONTS often used for typeface showings, listed eight times in the Walker typeface. The basic font is like Helvetica, Arial, or Univers: It is a sansserif font, where the ends of character strokes are not finished with tiny perpendicular strokes. However, the image shows that the font lets you add serifs to any letter, and each showing of the word HAMBURGEFONSTIV adds a large number of serifs or thicker serifs to various letters, even letters like O that never take serifs in regular fonts. It sounds like the problem is well in hand. Not really. Designers aren’t writers, and programmers aren’t writers, either, by a long shot. Teaching them to make Web sites accessible means teaching them to write short, medium, and long textual equivalents of graphic imagery. We have to teach nonwriters to write coherent and in many cases evocative English. from http://www.joeclark.org/book/permission.html from his Web log: I[base ']m not unhappy. I am just concerned. The [base "]Navigation[per thou] chapter is overrun with vexing details. The current showstopper concerns the integration of tabindex and accesskey in database-driven pages. Rudy Limeback has helped me out. But I feel I will let my readers down without giving full instructions on how to accomplish it in various content-management systems, with which I am supposedly au courant. In reality, with the labyrinthine, almost Machiavellian complexities of the Big Two content-management systems (of which I know nothing, a state that will never be remedied), I may have to settle for letting down my readers. Table of contents has been largely settled with VicquÃ∞[infinity][infinity]Ã∞[not equal]Ã≠©. It goes something like this, and I am not speaking out of turn, because it's gonna be posted at Amazon in due course anyway: Copyright; Title page; Table of contents; In-house staff credits; Acknowledgements and dedication (ha! [base "]To everyone who refused to believe in me over the years: I guess you gambled big and lost[per thou]); Author bio Introduction: Who the hell am I to tell you what to do? 1.The Media Access Manifesto 2.How do people with disabilities use computers? 3.Why bother? 4.How to read this book Ã∞[infinity][not equal]Ã∞[not equal]Ã≠¶ What this book will teach you 5.What is media access? 6.The structure of accessible pages 7.The image problem 8.Text and links 9.Navigation 10.Type and colour 11.Tables 12.Stylesheets 13.Browsers and devices 14.Interactivity 15.Multimedia 16.Flash and PDF 17.Audio interfaces 18.Future dreams 19.Certification Appendices: Accessibility and the law Ã∞[infinity][not equal]Ã∞[not equal]Ã≠¶ Maguire vs. Sydney Olympics; Language codes; Quick-reference card see also http://www.utoronto.ca/atrc/reference/staff/treviranus/treviranus.htmlDesign Versus Accessibility?
Authoring tools
Lessons to be learned: you need to know and understand HTMLhttp://www.softpile.com/Development/Java/Review_03151_index.html Java Accessibility Helper Description: Java Accessibility Helper aids Java software developers in making their JFC-based programs accessible to persons with disabilities. The Java Accessibility Helper generates a report that includes a prioritized list of problems and potential problems with the application being tested. For example, the Helper verifies that all input fields in an application can be reached using only the keyboard. The Accessibility Helper does not require the source code for the application being tested and works with any AWT or Swing-based application. The Java Accessibility Helper may be run in two ways: as a standalone application or as an assistive technology, embedded in the application it is testing. Version: 1.0 beta Size: 153 Kb Date: June 23, 2000 License: Freeware OS: Windows 95/98/NT/2000 Interface languages: (image of US flag) Author: Sun Microsystems, Inc. Download Sites: ftp.java.sun.com Making your HTML Accessible
The problem with Frames tables Table Manners
forms
see: http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/forms/fieldset.html
and see the form I did for LCIL - booking form for courses.
read audits I have done: includeing for city council : agile site : see http://www.gazingus.org/weblog/2001/07/
scripting
navigation
Using CSS