Hi Christine
> Hi Paul,
>
> I just read your accessibility policy "....It was our feeling
> that, after experimenting with both scalable and elastic
> sites, complying with this checkpoint would undermine the
> design. This would jeopardise our first objective, which was
> to show sites could be both accessible AND visually
> appealing." But the design was only one part of the first
> objective? I'm confused, :| but more than that disappointed
> that this statement should come from a web design company
> that specialises in accessibility. Is it really unattainable?
> IMHO it's this type of thinking will continue to jeopardise
> the development of websites that are accessible AND visually
> appealing. :(
I'm not sure which part of the Headscape policy you are referring to, but I
would agree with the comments on the page that "The trouble is that most web
designers agree web accessibility is important but few can agree on the best
way of making a site accessible." Interestingly when I attended the
"Accessible Design in the Digital World" Conference held in Dundee on
24-25th August 2005 a speaker from GAWD (Guild Of Accessible Web Designers"
made exactly the same point.
On the subject of use of Flash, as the page says, Flash can be made
accessible - and it should be noted that the WCAG 2.0 draft (unlike WCAG
1.0) is tolerant of proprietary formats.
Some of these points were addressed in a paper on "Forcing Standardization
or Accommodating Diversity? A Framework for Applying the WCAG in the Real
World" which was given at the International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on
Web Accessibility held in Chiba, near Tokyo, Japan on 20th May 2005. See
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/papers/w4a-2005/
We (myself, Lawrie Phipps, David Sloan, Helen Petrie) argue that the notion
of universal accessibility is, in general, unattainable, and the aim should
be for widening participation.
Comments welcome.
Brian
---------------------------------------
Brian Kelly
UK Web Focus
UKOLN
University of Bath
BATH
BA2 7AY
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
Phone: 01225 383943
FOAF: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/b.kelly/foaf/bkelly-foaf.xrdf
For info on FOAF see http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/b.kelly/foaf/
> Best regards,
> Christina
>
> PS Was just about to send this as your email asking for
> review came in, hence the quick response.
>
>
> Paul Boag wrote:
>
>
> > FIXED OR VARIABLE WIDTH
> > This is one of the biggest debates that exist on the web
> and one where people never agree! However, from a purely
> accessible point of view fixed width can prove a problem if
> you are going for more than single A compliancy.
> >
> > Checkpoint 3.4 (Priority 2) says:
> > Use relative rather than absolute units in markup language
> attribute values and stylesheet property values.
> >
> > Our interpretation of this is that you cannot use pixel
> values to fix the width.
> >
> > You may find this page from our new site useful:
> >
> http://headscape.headscapedev.com/text/159/our_accessibility_p
> olicy.html
> >
> > Please note this is not a live site so do not pass the url around.
> >
> > However, to complicate the issue still further there are
> some who argue that pixels are not an absolute value! See:
> >
> > http://blog.fawny.org/2005/09/21/measures/
> >
> > As normal, if you want to chat this over give me a call on
> 01258 453889.
> >
> > Paul
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Managing an institutional web site
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of K Fearon
> > Sent: 07 December 2005 11:54
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Two queries
> >
> > Apologies for cross posting.
> >
> > We're having our web pages redesigned at the moment and a
> couple of issues
> > have arisen on which I'd appreciate some feedback.
> >
> > Firstly, the designers have advised us to have some intro
> text on our main
> > welcome page to make it more friendly to search engines.
> Currently we only
> > have links to content, and meta tags. We'd originally cut
> any text on our
> > home page as it tends to be uninformative and people don't
> really read it,
> > but we might reconsider if they're right. Any comments?
> >
> > Secondly, we're having a discussion about fixed width vs
> relative width
> > designs. They are keen for us to go for fixed width, but
> this goes against
> > accessibility standards. I know a lot of university pages
> are designed at
> > a fixed width - was this a point you decided to compromise
> on? Was the
> > compromise worth it?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Kriss
> >
> >
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------
> > Web Coordinator Stables S010 Tel: (01904)
> 434682 Fax: 434466
> > University of York, UK 9-5.15, Mon-Fri
> http://www.york.ac.uk/coord/
> >
>
> --
> Christina McGuire
> Web Development Officer
> Library & Information Services (Room 410A)
> National Institute for Medical Research
> Ridgeway, Mill Hill
> London, NW7 1AA
>
> Tel: +44 (0)20 8816 2233
> http://www.nimr.mrc.ac.uk
>
>
>
> "Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine."
>
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