Roger Johansson does a nice job of showing a ‘before and after’ on a piece of JavaScript that shocked him with all its inline CSS, obtrusive scripting and other various sins. The task was to create an accessible expanding/collapsing menu, but the tutorial he read (on a Swedish language site) inspired Roger to come up with a better solution. Anyway, I’ll stop wittering on, and simply point you in the direction of his post accessible expanding and collapsing menu. Nice one, Roger!
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Outside reading
- Jeremy Keith does an excellent write-up of the Accessibility 2.0 conference (which I was unable to attend)
- Sharepoint and Web Accessibility
- Bruce Lawson describes the disparity between Sharepoint/MOSS developed web sites and the level of accessiblity that the tool offers to users (summary - it really is not good!)
- How does a screen reader user really hear your web site?
- Interesting post on Beast Blog about how a screen reader user - a real one! Not one of those fake web developer tester types! - uses the tool to read a web page. A few surprises were waiting in store for author Mike Cherim.
- Web Accessibility Toolbar now available in simplified Chinese
- The Web Accessibility Tools Consortium (WAT-C) release a simplified Chinese version of the Web Accessibility Toolbar.
- Web 2.0 vs Web Accessibility
- 1-day seminar in London, 25th April, brings together experts in the field to discuss/demonstrate the accessibility issues faced by web 2.0.
- Leading accessibility technologists form new alliance to fix problems
- The Accessibility Interoperability Alliance (AIA), comprising (among others) Adobe, HP, Microsoft, Novell, and from the assistive tech industry Dolphin, GW Micro and HiSoftware forms to work together "to create and harmonize standards for accessible techn
- Fieldsets, legends and screen readers
- An excellent run-down of how fieldsets and legends can improve accessibility and how the various screen readers cope with this useful markup.
- CAPTCHAs explained - WacBlog
- Another really good post on the RNIB\'s Web Access Centre blog explaining captchas, why they\'re bad for accessibility and what the alternatives may be.
- Making WCAG easier to read
- Derek Featherstone has created some fancy style sheets to make reading WCAG documents a little easier on the eye.
- Top Tips for the title attribute
- Ann McMeekin provides a set of simple tips regarding when - or rather when not to - use the title attribute. \'Cos sometimes you can try *too much* to be helpful
- California court tilts towards mandating web accessibility
- Outlaw.com reports (on behalf of The Register) on the Target California class action lawsuit, digging a little deeper into what Target have been doing of late to address matters.
- Screen Readers and display:none
- Juicy Studio, aka Gez Lemon, investigate some quirks whereby screen readers announce content that they should not be. Perhaps this could be used for good rather than evil?
- Google Developer Podcast: The status of accessibility on the Web
- An interview with Google research scientist TV Rahman (and Hubbell, his seeing-eye dog!). Lots of talk about CAPTCHAs and accessibility, but no sign of a transcript for this interview as yet.
- Transcript of Shawn Henry's talk from Jun 5th 2007 in London on RNIB's Web Access Centre Blog
- Virtual worlds open up to blind
- "Online virtual worlds could soon be accessible to blind people thanks to research by students at IBM in Ireland" states BBC News
Usability! wrote:
Hi Ian,
I’ve commented on Roger’s article (which he’s responded already - that was quick) to on the usability of the implementation. To put it into context…
When a user clicks on a typical navigation link, they expect to be taken somewhere, i.e. another page. With that expectation, the focus of the user then changes to the content. But the content won’t have changed.
Likewise, for a screenreader like JAWS, the focus (of the cursor) stays on the link rather than switching to the content.
All and all I’d urge caution with this kind of implementation of navigation.
What I’d much prefer to see is “static” navigation and “gallery” pages (where navigation appears in the content, not just the side-bar).
All said though, Roger has taken a mish-mash of code and elegantly web-standardised, rather than make it “accessible” per se*
* note I’m intentionally trying to start a bit of constructive argument/dialog here
Posted on 30-May-07 at 2:00 pm | Permalink