ri**************@hotmail.com writes:
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
http://www.cata.co.uk/_index.asp
Where's that - coming from? Is it your news client or mine?
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.
Alt text is generally okay, but some images are missing it
(home_text.gif, for example) and some aren't brilliant (alt='map', for
example)
Try viewing it at a width narrow enough that the menu wraps -
840px/Galeon here. The top item of each submenu goes under the menu
header to the right and is only partially readable.
Also has a horizontal scrollbar at this width.
White text on yellow background has terrible contrast. I have good
eyesight and find it difficult to read.
Orange links on yellow background are even worse contrast. When you
say 'low contrast' you mean it, don't you...
'more' used repeatedly as link text. Won't work out of context.
Your other-language pages still have the <title> and navigation in
English. So it's a mixed language page and needs the appropriate lang=
attributes adding.
Looks okay in Lynx.
Table layout is going to be narrow-browser unfriendly.
<font> specified colour so risking background-foreground clashes.
It strikes me as retro-fitted accessibility, really. You have a set of
pages that are inaccessible and then a set of options to make them
more accessible. A bit of work could remove the need for someone to
think about it. For example, you have an extremely low-contrast site,
with a high-contrast option. I don't like reading either much. Better
to pick a colour scheme with decent contrast in the first place and
specify the colours in a way that makes it safe for someone to use
their own colours if they want. Likewise you can have expanded menus,
which look terrible, take up lots of space on the page (massive
horizontal scroll problem), and - since the existing menu is already
fairly accessible, degrading to a list of lists - isn't particularly
necessary.
Rather than trying to fix the problems with the existing design at
http://www.cata.co.uk/ (and you have done good work to clear out some
of them) by bolting on new designs, you'd probably be better
redesigning to fix them. I have a set of guidelines for accessible
visual designs at
http://www.dur.ac.uk/its/services/we.../visualdesign/
Oh, and don't claim DDA compliance. Only a court can decide that and
I'd hope you weren't keen to end up there.
--
Chris
