Peter Gray is absolutely right to point out the accessibility shortcomings
of public sector museum websites. Remarkably the text sizing problem he
notes appears to only be an IE6 issue... it actually works OK on Netscape
4! The new National Gallery website does not render well through a audio
browser.
I also agree with Cristiano that css is a solution, or at least will be
when everyone uses browsers that actually render css as intended. I would
probably not go quite as far with ‘web standards’ as Peter appears to
advocate, as W3C/WIA standards don’t guarantee an accessible website, only
ones that meet the standards. I may be taken to task on this, but I believe
you can have accessible websites that are not standards compliant.
There is also no agreement on what makes a meaningful ALT tag. At a most
basic level these should not be missing for images which add meaning to a
page, nor should images which support page structure have anything but null
ALT tags. This is not difficult to do, but meaningful ALT tag descriptions
of images are far more complex.
I think Nick Poole is spot on in saying that there can be no such thing as
a 100% accessible website. The presentation at the Museum and the Web day
in Leicester raised the issue of deaf users who rely on sign language for
communication. If we are going to have 100% accessible websites then these
users must also be accommodated.
It isn’t possible for a website to be all things to all people. Personally
I would recommend a pragmatic approach, on the premise that the website
should function for both the target audience and as wide a cross section of
potential users as possible.... anyway that’s my fourpenny worth on this
topic!
Ian Edelman
Web Manager
Recreation and Heritage
Hampshire County Council
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