Javascript Accessibility Techniques

[Jim Ley]

Hi People,

The WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) folk in the W3 are looking to
get a good script techniques document, and are obviously looking for
help. See Matt May:

http://www.bestkungfu.com/archive/?id=496

now I don't know Matt really, I managed to miss talking to him at a
meeting we were both at last week, but generally the W3 and WAI folk
are all nice people. Work wouldn't be onerous, and even if you could
just lurk on the mailing list you would be of some value, so if anyone
does have some spare time, please let Matt know.

Reading http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/ is probably a good pre-requisite.

Cheers,

Jim.
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[Dr John Stockton]

JRS: In article <40****************@news.individual.net>, seen in
news:comp.lang.javascript, Jim Ley <ji*@jibbering.com> posted at Sat, 12
Jun 2004 21:49:38 :

The WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) folk in the W3 are looking to
get a good script techniques document, and are obviously looking for
help.

ISTM that the most important thing is never to use a new feature unless
it is truly necessary or adds greatly to the value of the page.
I wanted to check for a new version of TIDY, for Win98 console mode.

Consider http://tidy.sourceforge.net/ - that page is technically
satisfactory to me and simple in layout, though redesign advice from
someone more literate than technical could help (and it breaks ISO8601).
The page contains two mentions of Windows 98, in links.

At least one of them, probably that to htmltrim, loads a "choose where
from" page of moderately decorated aspect; but on (the only) two
occasions that I tried it, my browser crashed. On the first occasion,
all browser windows were lost, but Win98 and the Net connection
continued. On the second, IE appeared to be loop-crashing in the crash-
report code; hard reset time.

This represents what must be the nadir of accessibility. The offending
page in fact needed nothing but the plainest HTML - it really needed
only <p> or <br> and <a href= ... </a>.
It's not the only case of a "checking-related" site crashing the
browser, as you may recall.

Granted that, before the crash, I did have time to see the nature of the
page; but it cannot count as being practically accessible to me.

CAVEAT : for obvious reasons, I only tried it twice.

Work wouldn't be onerous, and even if you could
just lurk on the mailing list you would be of some value, so if anyone
does have some spare time, please let Matt know.

W3 appear to communicate only by published mailing list; I find this an
unacceptable deterrent. There should be a means of direct communication
with the author responsible for each page, in which correspondents'
copyright was respected.

So if you see Matt again ...

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[Jim Ley]

On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 13:49:27 +0100, Dr John Stockton
<sp**@merlyn.demon.co.uk> wrote:

This represents what must be the nadir of accessibility. The offending
page in fact needed nothing but the plainest HTML - it really needed
only <p> or <br> and <a href= ... </a>.
Some thingW3 appear to communicate only by published mailing list; I find this an
unacceptable deterrent. There should be a means of direct communication
with the author responsible for each page, in which correspondents'
copyright was respected.

Err, no, they use email, teleconferences, IRC and F2F meetings, it's
not difficult to find an appropriate method.

The majoriry of WAI groups do work in the open, but if you wish to
discuss something specific in private, the documents and groups all
publish their email addresses alongside the spec.

When you post to the W3 mailing lists, you also have to register your
acceptance of the archive policy before it is archived.

Jim.
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