Accessibility: Site check

[richard_quick_uk]

Hi,
If anyone's got the time I'd really appreciate any feedback on the
accessibility of this site:
http://www.cata.co.uk/_index.a*sp
I've just re-programmed it to try and make it as accessible as
possible, and it would be really good to get some feedback, especially
from anybody using assitive technology.
Thanks,
Richard

[Mason A. Clark]

On 7 Apr 2005 13:32:03 -0700, ri************* *@hotmail.com wrote:

Hi,
If anyone's got the time I'd really appreciate any feedback on the
accessibilit y of this site:
http://www.cata.co.uk/_index.a*sp
I've just re-programmed it to try and make it as accessible as
possible, and it would be really good to get some feedback, especially
from anybody using assitive technology.
Thanks,
Richard

This link is more accessible:

http://www.cata.co.uk/_index.asp

I don't mean to be unpleasant but I found nothing
about this site to be accessible. The orange/yellow
color choice, the small font for the "blind or
partially-sighted user," the small-font yellow on
black for "high contras," and small, congested
thumbnails make the page unpleasant for this
well-sighted viewer. It's a page I would abandon
instantly. (and my wife is from Cornwall !)

May I add that this is not uncommon on the web.
Clever aesthetics rather than readability.

Rethink what you are doing.

Sorry about this.

Mason C

[Thor Kottelin]

ri************* *@hotmail.com wrote:

If anyone's got the time I'd really appreciate any feedback on the
accessibility of this site:

http://www.cata.co.uk/_index.a*sp

The 404 message is on the verbose side, but valid HTML 4.1 Strict, and - at
least from my point of view - quite accessible, except for the Javascript
Back link.

Thor

--
http://www.anta.net/OH2GDF

[Adrienne]

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed ri************* *@hotmail.com writing
in news:11******** **************@ g14g2000cwa.goo glegroups.com:

Hi,
If anyone's got the time I'd really appreciate any feedback on the
accessibility of this site:
http://www.cata.co.uk/_index.a*sp
I've just re-programmed it to try and make it as accessible as
possible, and it would be really good to get some feedback, especially
from anybody using assitive technology.
Thanks,
Richard

You've got an error in the CSS, and Opera is showing a different background
color that Firefox. Note that I use pale blue instead of white for my
window background. Here's a screenshot: <http://www.cavalcade-of-
coding.info/usenet/cornwall.jpg>

I commend you on the option for low vision and/or blind users, although, if
you changed some of the colors, low vision users would probably be happy.
Here's a screenshot of what low vision users might see:
<http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info/...wallresult.jpg >

--
Adrienne Boswell
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

[Philip Ronan]

It looks terrible in IE. The text is tiny, and completely illegible when
displayed in white on a pale yellow background.

The text in the drop-down menus is even tinier. When I clicked the "expand
navigation" link and zoomed the text up so I could actually *read* the
menus, I got a horizontal scrollbar even when viewing full-screen on a
1600x1200 monitor.

Your hyperlinks are unidentifiable. The Japanese translation is totally
FUBARed.

Switching to NS7...
The layout is different now. Perhaps you wouldn't have these problems if you
avoided XHTML. The third row of text links ("home | about ...") has become
almost invisible (light orange on a yellow background). But at least the
links are underlined now. I guess that's the default setting kicking in.

This could really do with some improvement, IMHO.

--
phil [dot] ronan @ virgin [dot] net
http://vzone.virgin.net/phil.ronan/

[Chris Applegate]

ri************* *@hotmail.com wrote:

If anyone's got the time I'd really appreciate any feedback on the
accessibility of this site:
http://www.cata.co.uk/_index.aÂ*sp

I took a look in Lynx. As far as graphics-oriented web pages go, it was
okay. The large list of links at the top of every page was a bit
disconcerting -- it required me to scroll down to see if there was any
content on the page. After navigating to a new page, the menu is there
again, and I'm unsure whether I've successfully loaded the new page or
just reloaded the current page. I'm also a bit leery of putting image
descriptions inside alt attributes -- they often appear as non sequitur
declarative statements. Instead of, "A father and son watch some model
sailboats in a tank," you might consider something like, "Many patrons
enjoy the Museum's model sailboats floating in our atrium tank."

Phone numbers have spaces between the digits in Lynx. They look alright
in Firefox. That's because you're placing each number within a span
element, and Lynx handles spans differently than Gecko. Was that to
assist with screen readers? Kind of clever, if it works.

Last, but not least, if you're going to be so pedantic as to expand the
abbreviations A.M. and P.M., do it right. It's ante meridiem and post
meridiem. You might need a lang attribute to specify that those are in
Latin. Pedantry is encouraged, but must always be carried to its logical
conclusion.

CDA

[Andy Dingley]

On 7 Apr 2005 13:32:03 -0700, ri************* *@hotmail.com wrote:

If anyone's got the time I'd really appreciate any feedback on the
accessibilit y of this site:
http://www.cata.co.uk/_index.asp

What's with the leading "_" ? Just for beta testing?
It's almost there. In many ways you've clearly put a lot of technical
effort into getting things right,

Then completely bolloxed it by colour choices on the homepage!
There's no contrast - I can't read it, even if I wear the good
eyeballs.

And the "high contrast" version is even worse - the font choices (like
so many) are unreadable when placed with light text on black. Why do
you think solid black backgrounds are a good idea here ? Decades of
VDU ergonomics says otherwise.

I _HATE_ this content / stylesheet switching business (on any site).
Accessibility is about making the content work, not giving a link to a
second-guess at doing it right, through a link that your users
probably can't find.

A link to "Notes for enhanced access" isn't so bad, as your"We have added a number of features to make sure the website is accessible to blind and partially sighted users." text has it. But you really don't need to make some "magic
stylesheet" that changes the display.
The site is unprintable. Doesn't combining media="screen" and
title="default" give you a hint that something's amiss?

Give it a default stylesheet that works (basically the one you already
have for "screen"). Give it a print stylesheet (if you wish) that can
optimise some of the printing issues. I've never yet seen any good
need for a specific "screen" stylesheet.
I'm wary of the huge menu. Screen readers will be gabbling away for a
week. This is sensible on the homepage, but I'd be wary of doing it on
every page. Personally I give the full depth for the "local" menu
tree, but only the upper levels for the more distant parts of the
site. Switch them off with CSS visibility:hidd en; and turn them back
on dynamically if JavaScript is available. Non-JS nav just gets the
local version (and one extra click for long nav paths)
Unadorned <span>s concern me. If the mark-up is worth putting in, it's
worth subclassing or titling it. CSS that relies on an unclassed
<span> as a child of a known element, in contrast to a classed <span>
is a pain for maintenance.

Even more so, untitled <div>s (where they're semantically structuring
content) and <ul>s.
<div class="bump"><h 2>Open</h2></div>
<p>Open from Easter to the end of October</p>

<p>Weekdays 10 <acronym title="in the morning">a.m.</acronym> - 6 <acronym title="in the afternoon">p.m. </acronym><br />
Last admission 5.00 <acronym title="in the afternoon">p.m. </acronym> </p>
<p>Closed Saturdays and Sundays </p>
</div>
This could usefully gain a title of "Opening times". A title
attribute on the higher levels of <h*> elements isn't a bad thing
either - treat them like alt text on images, as a replacement for the
whole element. Although "Open" isn't a bad title in an overall
two-dimensional context, if you're reading (or listening) in a
strictly serial manner, the title with _the full context in one
phrase_ is much more accessible. Similarly title on <a> elements is
worth the effort.

I hate markup like this:

<div class="header">[<a href="...url... " >...stuff...</a>]

That's a list. It's even a menu if you like (I'd mark it up with
<menu> ) Give it some semantically sensible markup to emphasise
this, don't just do this flat-text business that only shows its real
structure when you render it.

"[" as a separator in menu items belongs in a CSS :before {content()}
rule, not in the main document.

Give the menu <div> a title too.
<img> needs title attributes as well as alt. Remember FireFox.
You don't need to class <li>s <li class="level2"> Put the class on the parent <ul>. I do like to class the <ul>s though,
because "counting down the tree" for nested <ul>s is a pain for the
CSS selectors.
I'm always distrustful of repeated <br /> elements, let alone &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" ... > can only ever cause trouble.
Inlining a style="border-left-width: 1px;" on the first <li> in a
list is a pain for future content management. Put it in the CSS and
use a class of "first element" if you have to (one day the CSS
selectors will let us do this automatically)

These days, don't hand-write HTML that you couldn't auto-generate. If
you use inline CSS like this, it would find itself hard-coded as the
specifics of a CSS implementation (border-left-width: 1px) inside a
loop of some poor unfortunate CMS. That'll bite you in the future.

<strong>Telepho ne:</strong> 0<span class="tiny"> </span>1<span class="tiny"> </span>7<span class="tiny"> What's with the funny digit spacing control ?

<span class="hidden"> .</span> this worries me

<a name="content" id="content"></a>

From the HTML 4 TR
: > Note. User agents should be able to find anchors created by empty A elements,
: > but some fail to do so. For example, some user agents may not find the
: > "empty-anchor" in the following HTML fragment:
Overall I like it. A good and thorough effort. If only I could read
the text on the homepage - I almost abandoned the site within seconds,
just because of that.

[Andy Dingley]

On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 19:05:24 +0000, Chris Applegate
<Ch************ @cwru.edu> wrote:

Last, but not least, if you're going to be so pedantic as to expand the
abbreviation s A.M. and P.M., do it right. It's ante meridiem and post
meridiem.

I disagree. This isn't a dictionary, it's a guidebook with opening
times. If someone doesn't know what they mean (whether by ignorance
or lack of context), then they don't need a latin lesson.

[Stan Brown]

"" wrote in comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html:

Hi,
If anyone's got the time I'd really appreciate any feedback on the
accessibilit y of this site:

You've posted this at least three times in at least two different
newsgroups that I've seen so far.

What is the accepted way to share a message across multiple
newsgroups?
http://smjg.port5.com/faqs/usenet/xpost.html

--

Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/

[Eric Bohlman]

Andy Dingley <di*****@codesm iths.com> wrote in
news:0m******** *************** *********@4ax.c om:

<strong>Telepho ne:</strong> 0<span class="tiny"> </span>1<span
class="tiny"> </span>7<span class="tiny">

What's with the funny digit spacing control ?

I'm guessing that it's a (probably clumsy) attempt to get screen readers to
read out the phone number as a digit string rather than a quantity (e.g.
read my area code as "seven seven three" rather than "seven hundred
seventy-three").