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Thread: Right tools for the Job!
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Thread Status: Active Thread Type: Sticky Thread Total posts in this thread: 9
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LSW
Advanced Member USA Joined: Nov 27, 2003 Post Count: 6287 Status: Offline |
"You have to use the right tools for the job!" - Bob the Builder That is one of my battle cries. I once went on a rant, my daughter (5 yrs. at the time) stood bye and listened as I went on about misuse of tags to her mother who knows some HTML. Well Jessie looked at me and said "You have to use the right tools for the job! Right Dad?", you can tell she was a big "Bob" fan. But it is the truth for web design too. Accessibility is supported by little things like logic and standards. Most all out tags have a meaning, this meaning is often a specific action in a browser or screen reader. So by using the wrong tag for the job you disturb the logic and schematics of the site and make it harder to use. Again I will be adding to this as time goes on, so keep checking back, I may have learned something new or remembered something. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HTML Attributes : The W3C has pretty well done away with many HTML Attributes like background colors ad borders etc.. All formatting should be done using CSS. This allows you freedom for doing more things like dotted borders that HTML does not allow, you can change something site wide quickly and easily. You make your pages smaller and faster. H1 - H6 : These have a meaning, they are headers, like chapters and sub chapters in a book. They do not exist so you can have a bold text of a certain size. They tell the user agent that all text following this word are under it in the scheme of things. This word hints at what the following text is about. So logical markup of the page makes the site more useable and accessible to everyone. If a word or phrase describes the following text, then use a header and not just bold text tells a non-visual surfer nothing. Also it has a logical order, H1, h2, H3....... do not use H4 in the middle of a page because it is the size you are looking for! Use CSS to make the correct header the size you want! Also you should never have a H3 without a H2 preceding it. Now it is sometimes argued whether a page should have 1 or multiple H1s, this is not provable either way. Tendency seems to suggest most developers feel each page should have only 1 H1 that describes the page. Under it you can then have multiple H2 with multiple H3, ...... as you need. Others argue that content can/should have a H1, but Navigation is a separate area, so can/should have a H1 as well. These are reasonable arguments so the battle rages on. I prefer single H1 describing the page. Also it is rated high with Search Engines when the best Keywords are included with the page title and the H1, it increases the ranking. Often my H! matches my Page title, but that is not required. Just remember to use headers in a logical manner where and in the order the are meant to be used and format them with CSS. <i><b> vs. <em><strong> : Here you will hear many argue not to use I and B any more as they are depreciated. More correctly, use them right. I & B are both visual tags. They are of no use to blind users to highlight important text. So if you wish to highlight a word and say that this word or phrase is more important then the rest, use either <em> (emphatic) or <strong>, this reacts with a screen reader and this word sticks out audibly from the rest. Now some argue that <em>, which is usually visually italic, is harder to read for those with poor vision, so it should not be used often and mostly one should use <strong> which is shown bold. If you wish to highlight words for some reason (studies show that when a first paragraph is shown bold it gets more attention from the reader) but that word is not more important, so you wish it to be only visually bold, then it is fine to use <b> instead, as a extra emphasis to a word with no real meaning could be confusing as well. <blockquote> : one of the most misued tags I see. Often used for formatting. Again it has a meaning to a screen reader, it says "the following long block of text is a quote" and is confusing if it is not a obvious quote. It is also used together with the cite attribute <blockquote cite=""> with a reference to whatever web site or book is being quoted from. Again you can/should format it with CSS. <q> & <blockquote> it should be noted are per standards required to insert the needed " quotation marks. That is to say we should simply write <q>bla bla bla</q> and the browser would add "bla bla bla". But as usual this is definitely a no go in IE, so if you use the <q> element, a standards browser should install the "" for you, but IE will not and the text will not stick out. If you insert the "" for IE a standards browser will show ""bla bla bla"". That is why many developers simply use ""in the code rather than the quote element. Lists : Also commonly not used correctly. best example is a Navigation bar. What is it? A list of links right? So why not use the list item? It is logical right? Well usually it is not use due to the bullets, but now with CSS those can be removed and the list laid out horizontally. It also makes formatting rollovers etc much easier by defining the <ul> and <li> rather than having to use classes. Same goes with articles and subsections in web sites, you will still see may people using paragraphs instead even though it is clearly a list they are simulating. So use lists where you need them, it makes the site logical and more attractive to search engines. Code/Pre : Again a example of mixing tags. <Pre> is a tag meant for pre-formated text, for example, if you wanted something to look typed, say like a form of official text, maybe an agreement, you would use Pre. Officially, all the spaces and carriage returns are rendered exactly as you type them. If however you want to show code, HTML offers the <Code> tag that means semantically that this text is an example of code, usually programming code. There are those who use pre for this... because pre handles white space and indention better... so for at least long bits of code they use Pre. This is however the equivalent of using Blockquote because if formats the look the way you want it... but the web is about semantics, the format you can get in other means so best to use the tag best suited to the meaning. ---------------------------------------- Gu.aal kwsh� yak'�i it�akw ijeet wugood�k LSW-WebDesign.com ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by LSW at Apr 27, 2008 1:49:19 PM] |
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Dac
Stranger Joined: Apr 19, 2005 Post Count: 2 Status: Offline |
Can you recommend a free text reader? I've used a couple, but they have expired. It was very helpful to have. It gave me insite to what a person with a handicap goes through. |
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LSW
Advanced Member USA Joined: Nov 27, 2003 Post Count: 6287 Status: Offline |
Well you can try Fangs wich is a Firefox extention, but it is still being developed. You can read what the site sounds like. Opera offers stylesheet switching and one of them is a text emmulator. Delorie.com offers a Lynx viewer , just look up your site. Actually hearing a site, most screenreaders are shareware. There is one based on the engine for JAWS but I will have to find it. I plan on listing such tools here as well. Try looking locally for a organization for the Blind, they may be able to have you come in and "see" yoursite with screenreaders. ---------------------------------------- Gu.aal kwsh� yak'�i it�akw ijeet wugood�k LSW-WebDesign.com |
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Dac
Stranger Joined: Apr 19, 2005 Post Count: 2 Status: Offline |
Thanks for the links and advice. I tried both, but not with success. I typed in the url in Lynx, but an error occured. Tried downloading the Firefox extention and received an error, clicked again and then nothing. In the past, I downloaded Jaws and it was pretty good for awhile. I had to remove it because it started to crash my machine with some type of conflict. I will contact blind to read. Later, if you come up with a reader I would be interested. Many thanks.  |
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Broc
Advanced Member U.S.A. Joined: Mar 28, 2005 Post Count: 962 Status: Offline |
Lynx works fine if you follow the instructions. You have to prove that you are the developer of the website in order to have lynx read the website. To do that you have to place a blank html file called delorie.htm in the same directory as the subject web page. Pretty easy actually... ---------------------------------------- Broc High Tide Web Services High Tide Templates |
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LSW
Advanced Member USA Joined: Nov 27, 2003 Post Count: 6287 Status: Offline |
When did they start that? I started using Opera so haven't been by delorie for some time. That sucks, I often tested sites with it to show people when I did reviews. I have had no problem installing Fangs, maybe you have some setting in your FF that does not allow it. You could try doing it manually. Ok here is a link to a Lynx with installer, but beware, links is a command level browser, no grafik interface. Here is a thread on the subject of Fangs Vs. Lynx ---------------------------------------- Gu.aal kwsh� yak'�i it�akw ijeet wugood�k LSW-WebDesign.com |
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newseed
Advanced Member Joined: Apr 2, 2005 Post Count: 2141 Status: Offline |
As a visually impaired person myself, I just wanted to thank all of you for being interested in developing your web site so that those that are visually impaired can read it...correctly. Your extra effort in helping those that are visually impaired is not in vain and is greatly appreciated. ---------------------------------------- Success is based on how much you spend. If it's not money, then the alternative is your time. The Kasper Group |
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tpattison
Advanced Member UK Joined: Dec 29, 2004 Post Count: 1662 Status: Offline |
I've tried Fangs but am not sure how accurate it is, considering it is in development. Has anyone tried a real screen reader? Tim ---------------------------------------- Pavonis Mons | Listen of the week: "Residue of Desire" by Acumen |
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LSW
Advanced Member USA Joined: Nov 27, 2003 Post Count: 6287 Status: Offline |
I will put this in it's own thread but it fits here too. Molly Holtzschlag has written anot excellant article, this time about semantics - a deiffinetly need to read.... The meaning of Semantics ---------------------------------------- Gu.aal kwsh� yak'�i it�akw ijeet wugood�k LSW-WebDesign.com |
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