|
|
| About site: Internet/Web Design and Development/Web Usability - Starling Access Services |
Return to Computers also Computers
|
| About site: http://www.starlingweb.com/webac.htm |
Title: Internet/Web Design and Development/Web Usability - Starling Access Services Interesting definition of Accessible Web Design. For use by "anyone, any web browsing technology and any site".
|
|
|
|
|
Squeak__The_Great_Return By Satoshi Nishihara. Descriptions, free goodies, links, and the fascinating 'Squeak Scale: Let it Grow: Brief Comparison of Class Library'. English, Nihongo.
| Towards_a_Tcl_Style_Guide Suggestions how to format Tcl/Tk sources by Tom Tromey.
| Sinclair_ZX81_Collection Collection of original Sinclair ZX81 hardware, software and literature. Photos and description for each item.
| Everything_Voicemail Informational site offering information, news, resources, and a directory of voicemail products and services.
| Student_Researcher Online data collection through web based surveys and questionnaires. Also provides a searchable education website directory to aid student and researcher data collection.
| MyBackup A simple one-click backup solution.
|
|
| Alexa statistic for http://www.starlingweb.com/webac.htm |
Please visit: http://www.starlingweb.com/webac.htm
|
| Related sites for http://www.starlingweb.com/webac.htm |
| Netroof_net Virtual web hosting packages with web based control panel, CGI, PHP4, MySQL, and Python. | | Mathematical_Structures_in_Computer_Science Focuses on the application of areas such as logic, algebra, geometry and category theory to theoretical computer science. | | ActivMedia_Robotics_Interface_for_Applications ARIA is an OO C++ library for controlling ActivMedia mobile robots. Provides dynamic control of velocity, heading, and other navigation settings as well as I/O bus, gripper, pan-tilt, and bumpers. ARI | | Pocket_Reader Allows the scanning, and instant OCR-ing, of text documents which can then be transferred to your RISC OS computer via the supplied cable and software. | | Sketsa Cross-platform vector drawing application based on SVG. [Commercial, Trial] | | 1st_Run_Computer_Services Specializes in production scanning and storage hardware. Our Service Bureau also provides image and OCR scanning, forms development, backfile conversions, data transfer and CD-ROM duplication. | | AFP548_com Provides resources for administrators, hints and tips for managing the OS, and a user community. | | Year_2000_Cartoons These Y2K cartoons are available for newsletters, advertising, Intranets, presentations and other projects. Original works from the author. | | Ellis,_Dawn_-_Digital_Delight_-_A_Students_Perspective Interests, programs, and resume. | | Nanyang_Technological_University School of Computer Engineering. | | Cubespace_Pty_Ltd Offers consulting and OLAP products based on Microsoft Analysis Services. | | MP3_player_puts_new_spin_on_tape_decks Although the tape deck is near the end of its life, an MP3 player just hitting the market aims to give the venerable device a new purpose. [News.com] (October 30, 2000) | | ZipStorage_com Sells removable storage media and drives, Zip disks, Jaz disks, and other media. | | Oddbloggers Blogs outside the norm in topic, design and/or structure. Preference given to anti-prohibition, anti-war, sex-positive writers. | | AnDan_Software Developing shareware and freeware software and documents. | | SQLiteManager Multilingual web based tool to manage SQLite databases. Support is also provided for SQLite3 databases and works for PHP 5 [Open Source, GPL]. | | Mac-on-linux This allows anyone who uses Linux on a PowerPC to run the Mac OS as its own application, at near full speed. | | DePalma_Enterprises Provides site design, hosting, domain registration, and search engine submission. | | Fotki A service for sharing and printing photos. Also offers blogs. | | Advertising_space_seller CGI program allowing you to sell your website advertising space direct to advertisers. |
|
This is websites2007.org cache of m/ as retrieved on 2008.08.30 websites2007.org's cache is the snapshot that we took of the page as we crawled the web. The page may have changed since that time.
|
Starling Access Services - Accessible Web Design
Home | Contact us | The Accessible Web | Links
| Site map
Accessible Web design - a definition
by Chuck Letourneau, Starling Access Services ©
1998, 2000, 2002, 2003
What does "Web accessibility" mean? To me it means that
anyone using any kind of Web browsing
technology must be able to visit any site and get a
full and complete understanding of the information contained
there, as well as have the full and complete ability to
interact with the site.
And, yes, I know there are circumstances under which meeting
these conditions would be difficult and perhaps even
(seemingly) impossible. But difficulty shouldn't preclude effort
and a barrier that seems impassable when viewed from one
perspective might be reduced or eliminated when seen from
another.
Some definitions
Anyone
By "anyone" I mean every person regardless of where they fall
on the spectrum of ability - from people having the full range of
sensory, motor, intellectual and educational skills to those who
have one or more limitations in those areas. The page author
should raise no barriers that prevent people from getting and
understanding the information on their Web site.
Any Web browsing technology
By "any Web browsing technology" I refer to the complete
range of current and legacy technology such as mainstream
graphical browsers (like Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape
Navigator), text-only browsers (like Lynx), and specialty
browsers (like IBM Home Page Reader for people with blindness).
The Web can also be browsed with emerging technologies like
mobile computing systems (used hands-free and eyes-free),
pocket-size display units (like cell-phone and pager displays),
or other small, non-graphical input and output devices.
Any site
By "any site" I mean every site. Every site on the Web is
presumably there to be seen by somebody. In very few cases does
the page author know who will be looking at the page, with what
technology, or with what abilities or limitations. To me it makes
a great deal of sense to maximize the accessibility of any site
to ensure that no potential customer, client, or visitor is
excluded.
Full and complete understanding
Barriers to "full and complete understanding" are many but
some are easier to overcome than others. Here are some of them,
in no particular order:
The language barrier:
The vast majority of Web sites are available in only one
language, usually the first language of the author. This tends to
exclude a large number of potential visitors who cannot read or
understand that language. Even with the use of automatic language
translation programs the content of many Web pages will be
confusing to some visitors because the translations are not
perfect.
The jargon barrier:
Even assuming a visitor is viewing a page written in their native
language there is no guarantee that full understanding will
follow. What might the average person get from a site devoted to
the scholarly discussion of quantum field theory? The words may
be English, but the concepts are alien. If one is designing a
site or writing a document for mass consumption then the onus is
on the author to make that site and the information contained
therein as understandable as possible. (Most government
information managers should keep that thought firmly in mind!).
[Someone recently complained that by using the word "onus",
above, I was guilty of using jargon and thus breaking my own
rules. I suspect that is a difference in scope: I might have to
spend a few years in graduate school to understand a paper on
quantum field theory, but thirty seconds with a dictionary would
explain "onus".]
The design barrier:
Some people think that to be truly accessible a page must contain
only plain text. This is simply not true. While it is true that
text is the best alternative for many non-textual page-design
elements it is also quite easy to make a text-only page that is
highly inaccessible to many users because of the placement of the
text in the display. For example, using a TABLE to lay out
multiple columns of text to look like a newspaper or magazine
page can cause no end of trouble for some visitors. This is
especially true of people with visual impairments who use
assistive technology called screen-readers with their graphical
browsers to hear the contents of the page. Another example of an
inaccessible text-only design would be a complex spreadsheet with
text that wraps within cells, and rows and columns that are
joined in clever ways to highlight related groupings of data.
Many non-visual users, or people whose browsers can't display
tables, may get little of value from that page.
There is hope for reducing the problems related to page design.
The W3C's HTML and XHTML specifications provide many techniques
that can add useful information about the design of a page to
help special software agents reformat them intelligently for
users with different needs. Using the W3C's Cascading Style Sheet
(CSS) specification greatly improves access to the information on
a site because it lets the author completely separate the "look"
or "layout" of a page from the content. Somebody who only wants
the content will be able to see it without the overhead of the
page design. It also means that the content can be displayed in
very different ways on a variety of different devices without
losing the meaning or message. The same page could be displayed
on a refreshable Braille device, on a large screen monitor, on a
one-line pager display, or spoken to you through a voice
synthesizer as you browse while driving to work in the
morning.
The "Somebody else's problem" barrier:
Unfortunately many Web pages, especially those on very large
sites, are often generated automatically by some document
retrieval and conversion software (i.e. content management
systems). Also many Web-page authors who find themselves under
significant time pressure may use the document-to-HTML conversion
tools found in common application software. Unfortunately in both
cases the markup that is generated is not always accessible.
Images will not be assigned alternative text, inappropriate
elements may be used to render original document formatting, and
so on. To ensure accessible markup an author or Web manager must
still show some initiative and "clean up" the poor quality
conversions. Fortunately, the World Wide Web Consortium's Web
Accessibility Initiative has developed guidelines for manufacturers of Web authoring and
conversion tools that, when adopted, will help
reduce the size of this barrier
The "Latest is greatest!" barrier:
Try as we might, keeping up with changes in Web technology is a
difficult task for people interested in Web accessibility. A site
featuring the newest languages and applications requires the
visitor to have the newest hardware or the newest version of a
browser, and that causes the same old problems. But don't get me
wrong: there is nothing wrong with "pushing the envelope" of Web
site design. More often than not the advances in Web technology
do make some things more accessible for a certain segment of the
population. Yet at the same time these advancements can present
huge barriers to many others. What you must ensure is that the
information you are trying to convey to your audience is not lost
to some of them just because you have access to technology they
don't have. So, by all means, use the latest and greatest, but
make sure you have included a fallback position for the rest of
us. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
developed by the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility
Initiative will provide you with the information you need to
accomplish this relatively simple task.
The "I didn't know that!" barrier:
Well, if you are reading this page... now you know. Thanks in
great part to the Web Accessibility Initiative and the large and
divers group of people involved in it, many more people around
the world are learning about the need for, and the benefits of,
accessible Web site design. There are moves afoot in both Canada
and the United States to ensure that government Web sites will be
far more accessible than in the past. Governments at every level
have an obligation (and quite often the mandate) to ensure that
all their constituents have equal access to important information
and services. Their presence on the Web should be no
exception.
Full and complete ability to interact with the site
By "full and complete ability to interact with the site", I
refer to the hundreds of different ways that people have invented
to work with computers. Believe it or not, not everyone uses a
mouse, even if they are using a graphical user interface. Telling
someone to "click on the picture of the house" is silly if they
don't have a clicker. It is even sillier if they can't see the
picture of the house because their browser doesn't display
graphics. Most well designed computer software (especially
applications for graphical operating systems) also allows for the
use of the keyboard to complete any operation or command. A Web
page should give you the same capability. And what about voice
control? Voice recognition is becoming a force to be believed in
the personal computer world. Can a voice user control your Web
page?
So that is my vision of Web accessibility. There are quite a
few Web sites (some are listed on the "Links of interest" page)
and a growing number of people who can tell you how to make your
Web pages accessible. However, I may be the only person who will
tell you how you can make your site INACCESSIBLE. I do this as a
public service:
3
How to make your Web page less useful to browsers that
understand what HTML is supposed to be used for, and probably
confusing and possibly inaccessible to some people who have
visual impairments:
Use a lot of HTML "tricks" to
enhance the visual display of your page (instead of using a style
sheet)
misuse HTML elements like H1-6, UL, OL, BLOCKQUOTE, CITE,
etc.
misuse or don't use alt-text and title
misuse colours and fonts
2
How to make your Web page very difficult to understand
for many users of older technology (and there are still many),
probably confusing to those of us who did not grow up watching
music-videos (a rapidly growing Web market), and quite likely
inaccessible to many people with visual or cognitive
impairments:
Lay out your information in a
highly complex manner -
by not using special markup for displaying large complex data
tables (spreadsheets),
by using FRAMES without special markup to open a series of
fixed or varying information windows,
by including text in more than one language on a given
page
1
How to make your Web page inaccessible to a very large
audience indeed, including people with many functional
limitations (such as a disability, but also more mundane but
potentially troublesome limitations like owning older technology,
low bandwidth connections, etc.):
Provide information in a format
that absolutely requires "something extra" from the user...
something they might not have -
like sight, hearing, mobility
like a particular browser, or an obscure plug-in or a high
speed connection
like prescience (forget to include basic page and site
navigation tools)
On the offchance that someone might mistake the last
three points for actual "guidelines", I humbly request you look
up "irony" in an English dictionary.
Copyright ©2003 Starling Access Services
Last updated: August 26, 2003
|
|
| |
Interesting | definition | of | Accessible | Web | Design. | For | use | by | "anyone, | any | web | browsing | technology | and | any | site". |
|
http://www.starlingweb.com/webac.htm
Starling Access Services 2008 August
dvd rental
dvd
Interesting definition of Accessible Web Design. For use by "anyone, any web browsing technology and any site".
Rules
|
© 2008 Internet Explorer 5+ or Netscape 6+
|
|
Recommended Sites: 1.
Arts -
Business -
Computers -
Games -
Health -
Home -
Kids and Teens -
News -
Recreation -
Reference -
Regional -
Science -
Shopping -
Society -
Sports -
World
Miss Gallery
- Top Anime Hentai
- DVD rental by mail
- Mobile Phone - Hotel Las Vegas - Credit Report - Secured Loans - Personal Loans
|
