DreamWeaver 4 Accessibility Modifications

The following objects have been added or amended from existing DreamWeaver 4 objects to improve the accessibility of the code that they output. Jump to installation notes.

Please note that this page does not constitute a tutorial - it assumes that you already know a little bit about accessibility and are simply frustrated with having to hand-code some of the tags in Dreamweaver. However, there is a tutorial on this site if you do want to learn a little bit more about creating better accessible forms.

If you have requests for more additions, please contact us and we'll see what we can do.

Related link - Carrie Bickner's XHTML DreamWeaver modifications - we suggest you install these first, then install the accessibility enhanced modifications on this page.

What objects have been enhanced/added

• Accessibility (new palette)
  • The acronym tag
    • <acronym title="title attribute">
      
  • The abbreviation tag
    • <abbr title="title attribute">
• Common
  • E-mail link
    • Adds a title attribute to the link - useful for providing extra information about who the recipient is
    • <a href="mailto:" title="title attribute"></a>
      
  • Table
    • <table ... summary="Summary attribute ">
      
    • Adds the invisible table summary attribute (useful for screenreaders). If no attribute is entered, the table is populated with summary="" - this is best practice, much like an empty alt attribute in an image.
      • For data tables, enter a suitable summary, e.g. <table summary="Average house prices for the western regions">
      • For layout tables, use an empty summary attribute, e.g. <table summary="">
    • Caption tag added - the caption element is rendered on screen above the header row.
• Containers (new palette)
  • Div <div class="classname" id="idname"></div>
    
  • Paragraph <p class="classname" id="idname"></p>
  • Span <span class="classname" id="idname"></span>
• Forms
  • The label tag is incredibly important for improving accessibility of a form
    • <label for="attribute"></label>
      

Installation notes

• Download Dreamweaverr mods - zip format
• Download Dreamweaver mods - sit file (for Mac Users)

Unzip it and place the four folders (Accessibility, Common, Containers, Forms) in the Configuration > Objects, as shown below:

Note: Be sure to back up your existing configuration > objects folder first, just in case you have difficulties or don't like the modifications.

These modifications have been tested only on DreamWeaver 4 - I have no idea how they will behave in MX, or if they even offer any advantages.

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