Peter,
Thanks for your comments on the accessibility of these and other sites - a
good reminder to us all.
Can you recommend any sites that *do* meet the standards???
If you know of any that are both accessible and well designed I'd be even
more pleased to hear about them!
Best wishes,
Jane
-----Original Message-----
From: Gray, Peter [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 27 January 2003 12:31
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Web sites of potential interest
> http://www.hcsminerva.com/elmbridge/ - Elmbridge e-museum; designed to
> provide greater accessibility to the museum (it sits on 2
> kiosks in the museum and on the web-site; was created with input from the
partially
> sighted and RNIB)
The kiosk version won't be a problem, but the web version crashes NN4.7
(Win98se). I'd import the style sheet to hide it from NN4. It works fine in
Opera 5.12 when I turn off style sheets (it works with them on as well, I
just wanted to see the "un-styled" version). I'd be interested to see it on
a machine that doesn't have Comic Sans, if only to find out what font gets
displayed instead!
The css validator at jigsaw.w3.org gives a number of errors, but only the
last two are significant (the rest relate to scrollbar properties), and an
impressive list of warnings, mostly about background-color/color potential
problems (many, probably most, of which could be safely ignored).
Nice to see an imagemap used properly!
>
> http://www.lookingatbuildings.org.uk/ - from Pevsner's Architectural
> Guides - contains a glossary, a section on how buildings are
> constructed and
> profiles of several cities' buildings. Has quite a few interactives.
>
You have the "valid HTML4.01" logo/link -- but it isn't! There's a problem
with your unordered list (it doesn't like it being nested within <p> tags),
and a missing alt attribute. Changes since the page was first validated?
That aside, I think this site shows just how you can use Flash to add
information, explanation and interactivity to a web site, rather than what
all too often happens, substitute animation for information. It's also a
great example of flexible design - flowing to fit the user's window, not
nailed to some fixed-width paper design.
Bit of a dog's breakfast in NN4 (the King of Broken Browsers), though.
Perhaps use an imported rather than a linked style sheet? A plain html
version will work fine (Opera 5.12 with style sheets off), and I think
that's all that should be required of a web site.
What's good about these sites is that even when there are accessibility
errors, they are minor, and they are isolated, because the sites show clear
evidence that accessibility was included from the beginning, rather than
being seen as a bolt-on extra.
To miss one alt attribute is mistake. To miss them out consistently begins
to look like carelessness.
> Regards
>
> Chris Meaney (AIMC)
> Managing Director
>
Best wishes
Pete (off to try them with Lynx!)
--
Peter M Gray
Museums Officer
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