Week 2 Changes for Accessibility

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Changes for Accessibility
Question 1
Question 2
Question 3

Web Accessibility Class TOC

A More Accessible Page

Below is a list of changes I made to the page:

• The original page had numerous nested tables. I removed as many tables as I could, and there are now NO nested tables. The header and navigation buttons still need to be in a fixed width table, but the others are now set to percentages. I added a summary to all the tables.
  
  
• Replaced the font tags with CSS formatting, using a Relative Font size of EM.
  
  
• All the Bold tags were replaced with Strong tags.
  
  
• A Skip Link was added at the top of the page so a user can skip over the image map links.
  
  
• A Back to Top link was added at the bottom of the page to facilitate navigation.
  
  
• Added redundant links for the client-side image map.
  
  
• I removed a Spacer GIF that did not have an ALT tag and was worthless anyway.
  
  
• The buttons and the "Program" image tags now have better, more descriptive ALT Text.
  
  
• A doctype of HTML 4.01 transitional was added and the document validates as such.
  
  
• The documents language (English) is listed as an attribute of the HTML tag.
  
  
• Personally, I would get rid of the image map header and the buttons with JavaScript. The buttons are functional without the JavaScript and the JavaScript menu is not really necessary.
  
  
• There was no where to use the Acronym tag for DWD until the footer of the page. But I wrote out the full name and acronym in the first occurrence of DWD in the ALT tag description.
  
  
• This page has no Priority One or Three checkpoints, but it still has 2 Priority Two checkpoints because of design issues. There are the 2 fixed width tables that hold the header image map and the navigation buttons. Also, the JavaScript menu behind the buttons does require a mouse, but the menus are not really necessary since the buttons can be activated by themselves.

Review Questions

1. What can Bobby do to help you, and what are its limitations? Name three types of things Bobby will tell you, and three types of things it can't spot.

   Bobby can go through the page and point out the structure of the page, but many of the items it will list can only be evaluated for accessibility by a human. Bobby can find missing alt tags, absolute widths, and JavaScript functions. What Bobby cannot tell you is if the alt text that is present has helpful descriptions, if the absolute widths can be eliminated, or if the JavaScript is necessary and requires alternative functionality.

2. In Week One you tried some web sites with your browser disabled; this week, you were asked to use Bobby on one of those sites. How well do you think Bobby did at identifying the problems you faced?

   The Priority Checkpoints and User Checkpoints are pretty good. They picked up the fixed widths, the missing ALT text, the missing DOCTYPE, missing text language, the font and center tags (obsolete language features) and other good things. I think Bobby is a good tool to start learning about page accessibility problems because you can click on the link mentioned in the Priority and User Checkpoints and find out the rationale behind the checkpoints. Then researching a bit more in the WCAG guidelines gives you a really good understanding of the issues. Very nice tool. BUT a designer still needs to go through and evaluate many things like the User Checkpoints, and see if they actually apply to the document.

   I had one problem with Bobby, where it kept saying that my modified page had two links using the same link text but going to different locations. I spent a good deal of time (and that was with line numbers) trying to figure out what Bobby was talking about. Finally I got rid of the indentation in my code by pulling the link image and the a href on to one line, this got Bobby to quit complaining....weird!

3. Which of the WCAG Priority One checkpoints do you think are the easiest types of errors to correct and which do you think are the most time consuming or difficult?

   Here is a link to the Checklist of Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.

   I do not think the Priority One checkpoints are asking too much of a designer but if I had to choose which I found most difficult to satisfy I think it would be Checkpoint 14.1 Use the clearest and simplest language appropriate for a site's content. Even the ALT text needs to be clear and simple. Checkpoint 1.2 Provide redundant text links for each active region of a server-side image map can often be difficult because it "clutters" up a page, breaking the design. NOW I know design is not as important as functionality and information but some designers have a hard time with that premise. Personally, I would use an Image Slicer tool (when possible) to create the client-side image map affect. Then redundant links would not be necessary. Anytime you have redundant information, links or pages, you run into the problem of keeping redundant information updated.