MODULE
FIVE-JOURNAL-WEB ACCESSIBILITY
Initially looking at the website below for accessibility
issues, I identified poor color contrast (light blue text on a
royal blue background), fuzzy and broken text, hyperlinks in the same color as
the background, and an irritating marquee tool that would have made the site
difficult to read for users with poor vision. While there was a video, the
audio was not captioned. Text shown on the screen did not mirror the
narration. These faults kept the site
from being Perceivable and Understandable .
Navigation on the site was by mouse alone which would have rendered it
in-Operable for users with motor-function disabilities. The site lacked font
consistency. There were no options to change the appearance of the text.
The “Cynthia Says” website was much more thorough and
specific in pointing out accessibility issues than the “WAVE” site. It noted untagged elements, tables and frames
as well as a lack of specific code to keep the screen from blinking. “Cynthia
Says” verified that the site was not “robust” because it pointed out numerous
“IMG” elements containing the “alt” attribute with an empty value. Here is an example from Line 56.
<img
src="images/link2.jpg" width="476" height="142"></a><a
href="http://webaim.org/resources/cynthiasays/"><img
alt="" src="images/link3.jpg" width="476" height="142" class="style1"
/></a></p>
I was confused as to why this should matter until I read the
following explanation on http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9610.html.
"Most people already know about the use of "alt attributes to provide alternative text for images though there are still many Web pages without ALTs. Some accessibility specialists advocate so-called "described images" where text is provided to verbalize what a seeing user would see. For example the Web Access Symbol shown above might be described as a glowing globe with a keyhole." In my opinion such literal descriptions are fairly useless for Web pages unless the user is an art critic. I much prefer "utility descriptions" that verbalize the meaning or the role of the image in the dialogue: what is the image intended to communicate and what will happen if it is clicked?" "An accessible website should utilize alternative texts or utility descriptions of all images to make them comprehensible to visually-impaired users.
"Most people already know about the use of "alt attributes to provide alternative text for images though there are still many Web pages without ALTs. Some accessibility specialists advocate so-called "described images" where text is provided to verbalize what a seeing user would see. For example the Web Access Symbol shown above might be described as a glowing globe with a keyhole." In my opinion such literal descriptions are fairly useless for Web pages unless the user is an art critic. I much prefer "utility descriptions" that verbalize the meaning or the role of the image in the dialogue: what is the image intended to communicate and what will happen if it is clicked?" "An accessible website should utilize alternative texts or utility descriptions of all images to make them comprehensible to visually-impaired users.
Marquee elements contain scrolling text and are unsuitable
for truly accessible websites.
Testing my former school’s website (http://www.tcms.fcps.net/) found
much of the same mistakes as in the class example site. Uncaptioned video. Untagged elements. Code not sufficiently robust. No options to
change font sizes or color. I called Tammy Lane of the Fayette County Public
Schools to see if there was a policy in place concerning web accessibility. She
said that there is no official Fayette County policy on website accessibility
for the disabled. Four years ago when they overhauled the site they began
instituting the use of tags so a reading program could pick up the text, but
that’s about it. They do not add descriptive tags to photos or caption audio.
After reviewing the materials from this module, I can see I will
have to revise some plans for my web site. While most of my video has text
transcription available, it’s not captioned. I can do that myself as it’s
just a matter of dropping things back in the video editing program. Color and
font choices should be easy to control, but I’m not sure of how to add audio
narration for the blind without the page becoming too crowded. Can I just use
tags and let the assistive technology do the rest? I already control for color blindness on my
page because my fiancé is color-blind. Client-side
image maps should assist users with limited motor coordination. I also need to
let people know that my site is accessible by using the symbol for
accessibility.
In reading about the various issues inherent to web
accessibility, it occurred to me that this issue of web accessibility is more
crucial than ever as our population ages. I’ll be fifty this year. I’ve been
using the internet for almost twenty years at this point and I certainly see
myself continuing to do so for at least the next twenty years. In designing a
web site for use by both my students and other drama teachers I need to
consider a design not only for my possibly impaired users, but for myself in
the future.
MODULE 6- JOURNAL- CASCADING STYLE SHEETS
You weren't kidding, Dr. Peach, this was a bit of a pain. However after two aspirin ,a large slice of chocolate cake and more than a little profanity, I finally was able to change header one and two to hot pink and my background to green. I can see where the use of Cascading Style Sheets would help a blogger customize their template for a unique appearance that is consistently applied over multiple entries/pages. I don't know how much of this I'll be applying to my particular project, but it was a useful tool to learn.(Note on the above reference to profanity: I promise I was home alone.)
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