dw_accessibility | Recent Entries

I've temporarily set commenting privileges on this community to registered accounts only (no anonymous comments), since it's apparently been put on a spambot network's spam list. Someone remind me to turn it back in a week or two in the hopes they'll have given up by then :)

clefurgey

Just thought I'd pop in really quickly to say hi, and how thrilled I am to see this community.
I'm a relative newby to DW, even though I've had my account here for ages (i'm lazy and don't update my journals enough).
Anyway, I love it here so far, with only a couple minor questions, one of which has nothing to do with DW specifically but I didn't know where else to post it, sooo.
First, I'm using both jaws and NVDA, and they both work really well.
Next, thank you for setting things up so that icon keywords or descriptions get read, I really appreciate it.
Now, for my questions.
1. Is there any way to take the news community off the top of my homePage? If not that's ok, it's not a huge deal, I just wondered.
2. Now, for the question that has nothing to do with DW. Does anyone know how to remove an account from the list of choices when you log into Semagic? I was setting something up the other day and made a mistake, but cannot find any way of deleting the screwed up account.
Sorry that last one's kinda OT, but I couldn't find anywhere else to post it.
Anyway, thanks for any help anyone can give, and I look forward to using DW.

deborah

I've been thinking for a little while about making a DW suggestion about putting in something that makes it easy for people to generate accessible hyperlinked footnotes in their posts. This week, somebody ran this little script to generate dynamic footnotes by the WebAIM mailing list.

I was hoping that people here could give it a try and see what they think. It's a really neat little tool. It requires JavaScript not be disabled, and possibly might require newer versions of JAWS (because it uses WAI-ARIA), but basically it makes it so that creating only a tiny little snippet of code, you can get footnotes that, in a keyboard and screen reader accessible fashion, allow you to jump back and forth between the footnote in the cited reference. He also added a configurable hotkey so that screenreaders could announce the footnote text without changing the page focus. (I tested that with in NVDA, and it worked splendidly.)

What do people think of it?

Demo of dynamic footnotes

A bunch of new accessibility fixes have gone live on the Dreamwidth site with the latest code push! They're all listed in the

dw_maintenance entries but they're mixed in with tons of other stuff so I'm pulling them out to list here for those people who are interested...

( Accessibility wins! )

This code push also activates the very first beta testing of our new Create Entries page! This is a complete rewrite of the old Update page in order to allow for future expansion and new features such as draft posts, scheduled posts, recurring posts, expanding the range of what can be posted to your journal, and a whole host of other awesome things. It's not finished yet - the biggest thing you'll notice missing is the rich text editor (RTE), you have to type posts in HTML if you're using this beta feature.

This you will only see this new beta update page if you turn on beta testing, and you can turn it off at any time. Check out

dw_beta for more details about this.

I'd like to really encourage people who use accessibility technologies of any type, including screen readers, magnifying software, large text, speech-to-text software, keyboard-only access, etc., to try this beta out if you have some spare time and energy.

fu, who is doing the programming for this new page, is very aware of accessibility needs and we all want to get it as accessible as possible so we need to know what's not easily accessible yet! Pop over to

dw_beta and read the post about the new Create Entries page and leave your comments over there so we can keep improving.

Cheers,
rb

codeman38

On the page to enter credit card details for an order, I noticed two small issues that one might consider issues of cognitive accessibility, that seem like they could easily be fixed:

1. Somewhat related to Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names, the way the name fields are set up doesn't actually match the format it's in on my credit card. The name embossed on my credit card is in the form "John Q Public" (though with my real name, of course), and I'm never quite sure how to enter it on forms that have only a First Name and Last Name field; usually I end up entering "John Q" in the first name field. Unless your payment processor actually requires the name to be separated into first and last, it'd make much more sense to just have a single "name as listed on account" field, in my opinion.

2. My brain sometimes has a hard time remembering what numbers go with what month names. (This is not helped by the fact that the months were named when the year still started in March, so all the Latin root words are off by two!) My credit card lists its expiration date as 07/14, and so on any form where the months are listed by name rather than number, I have to scroll down line by line and count to make sure I have the right month. It seems like it'd make just as much sense to have the months listed as "01 - January", "02 - February", etc.; this is how I've seen it done on a number of other e-commerce sites.

denise

We have discussed, multiple times, how to utilize the varying combinations of keywords, descriptions, and comments on icons. Bug 2773 is one of the places where that discussion has been happening, and there has been previous discussion here in

dw_accessibility: Title attribute and userpics. (There was, unfortunately, no consensus, indicating that -- as always -- one person's accessibility is another person's accessibility nightmare.)

Currently, the description is used as the icon's alt text (viewable/read by screenreaders, text-based browsers, and most browsers with images turned off), the keywords are used as the title text (viewable in a popup when moused over in most graphical browsers; unavailable to screenreaders and most mobile devices), and the comments/credits are only shown on the icons page.

Some of the issues that have been brought up/discussed:

1). Information should never be available to graphical browsers and sighted users that isn't available to screenreaders, text-based browsers, and non-sighted users. Right now, keywords are only available inline to people who can mouseover the icon image and read the resulting tooltip.

2). Web standards say that alt and title text should not be the same. (We're more than willing to ignore standards when standards are wrong, but it's still a consideration.)

3). Making alt text be username + icon keywords + description + comments (aka, combining the existing alt text and the existing title text) would result in hellaciously long alt text that would have to be read out every time.

4). Various people already using any of the four pieces that go into the alt text and the title text right now -- username, keywords, description, and comments -- have come to rely on having that information available, and would prefer it not be removed.

5). Hover text (which most browsers use the title attribute for) can only be reached by mousing over the image (which already excludes a large group of people).

6). Most browsers only keep hover text visible for a short length of time, meaning that long title text would not be readable in the time it stays visible.

With all of that said, please take the poll below indicating which option you'd prefer. There are two polls. One is for people who interact with the site visually/graphically; one is for people who interact with the site purely text-based/screenreader-based. Please only answer the poll that is applicable to you.

The polls are anonymized; everyone will see the answers and who voted for what, but nobody will see a name attached to them. If you have a problem answering the poll, please comment to this entry; anonymous commenting is enabled in this community if you aren't comfortable commenting while logged-in.

(The results of this poll will not necessarily determine what we do, but it will be part of the information we use while we decide.)
( Read more... )

denise

I've just posted an entry to

dw_styles asking for brainstorming on categorizing styles/themes. I'm particularly interested in accessibility concerns, so if you have a second, pop over and give me your thoughts!

sophie

I was looking at the icons page for some friends recently when I realised something; each icon on the page has the description as its ALT text, even though the description is given in the next column over anyway.

(for an example of an icons page with descriptions, see my icons page.)

Since I myself don't use a screen reader, I don't know whether this makes things easier or more difficult for those who do, or whether it impacts accessibility in any other way. One of the aforementioned friends, who is blind and uses NVDA (a free, open-source screen reader for Windows), said that they think it's a little odd and that it would probably be better to use the keywords as the ALT text on that page. (Everywhere else, of course, should still use the description.)

I'd love to get input from a wider audience, though, and particularly from people for whom this sort of thing matters, such as those using screen readers. What do you all think? I'd post to

dw_suggestions but I'd prefer to know the views from the people here first.

deborah

I'm sitting down to work on bug 820, "Conform to WAI-ARIA guidelines throughout site" (two years after the bug was first opened, *hangs head in shame*). Don't worry if you don't know what WAI-ARIA is; suffice to say it's a technology that improves the accessibility of webpages.

The first thing I am going to do is focus on what needs we have that WAI-ARIA can meet.

To that end, I would love it if people took this as an opportunity to name their accessibility problems with dreamwidth, however small. I'm going to go back and look through the archives of this community, and I'm going to look at all the accessibility bugs in bugzilla, so don't feel you need to repeat things which have already been said. But don't worry about repeating accessibility concerns which have already been said, either; I have no problem with duplicates. Also, don't worry about only reporting accessibility issues you think WAI-ARIA can fix -- report everything, and I will figure out if WAI-ARIA can do anything to improve the user experience.

And hey, if it can't, maybe I will take other issues from this post, that don't come under WAI-ARIA, and create suggestions or new bugzilla bugs. Nothing goes to waste around here! :-)

azuire

I understand there's algorithms to generate the html number on entries, and that these aren't consecutive to protect privacy. I'm wondering if it's possible to personalise these to generate numbers that can prime-factorise or end with certain integers (such as 5 or 0?), for those of us with OCD? I know this is an issue for at least two other people besides me.

Thanks in advance!

foxfirefey

I'm on a web accessibility email list at work, so I get a lot of good pointers to resources:

HTML5 Accessibility Challenges: what it includes, how it helps accessibility, and the problems it can cause

meloukhia

Animations and flashing things (including animated user icons and mood icons) basically break my brain and they keep showing up on my reading list, much to my dismay. I'm wonder if it's possible to add an option to the user settings to block all animations on the site (in my innocence about web development, I have no idea how difficult this would be)? I know this is an accessibility need for other people as well.

foxfirefey

The results from a December 2010 survey of screen reader users conducted by WebAIM.

ketsu

I've been wondering about this for a while, and just now decided to ask...

Why are tables broken so badly on Dreamwidth? I get that it's for accessibility, but how does removing borders help? How does screwing up the alignment of cells only when one of them contains an image help? (Example: This becomes this [not my entry], but the cells on this entry are aligned just fine.) Edit: That goes for font styling, also. I know <font> is deprecated, but it's hard to get used to using proper CSS on sites where the stylesheets aren't mine to control (not that that's a bad thing, but there's my reason).

I've tried having a screenreader read an ordinary table and then the version of the table that Dreamwidth "fixed" and noticed no difference. So... what exactly is the reason?

jadelennox

the accessibility DC meet up group says:

We are looking for speakers for the next few months for our events.

If you have a topic you want to talk about please contact us at info@accessibilitydc.org with any talk ideas.

You don't have to be local to the Washington, DC or Batlimore, MD area, since we can Skype you in or some other means of video.

More details are at the Online invitation.

We're adding some previews when you're choosing a site skin, and I've been thinking about an appropriate level of information for the alt text.

The alt text mentions the colors, the orientation of the menus, and whether or not the menus use Javascript. Is there anything else that needs to be added, or is there any non-essential information that should be removed?

For reference, here is sample alt text for four of the site skins:

Celerity: Olive and white with vertical non-Javascript menus
Gradation Horizontal: White on black with horizontal Javascript menus
Gradation Vertical: White on black with vertical non-Javascript menus
Lynx: Simple, bare skin with minimal decoration and navigation

denise

I will be speaking this year at linux.conf.au on the topic of accessibility -- a one hour and forty-five minute short tutorial called "Beyond Alt Text: Accessibility for the 21st Century". The description of it is:

( Tutorial description )

In order to gather as much data as possible, I'd like to ask people who interact with the internet with the help of assistive technology to take a short "survey" (okay, to answer a few questions, really) -- I know enough to know that there's no way I know everything, and the more perspectives I can get from assistive tech users, the better.

I'm particularly looking for input from:

* screenreader users (both wholly blind and low-vision users -- the contrast will be valuable!)
* voice input/navigation users
* keyboard-only navigation users
* people with accessibility concerns that don't necessarily need assistive tech (ocular migraines, seizure disorders, autistic spectrum disorders, etc) but who can benefit from accessibility work

Still, anyone who feels that they have accessibility concerns, or who feels like they benefit from accessibility improvements, is more than welcome to fill out the list of questions. The more opinions and perspectives I can present, the better.

Please leave a comment with your answers, or if you aren't comfortable discussing your answers in public, you can private message me or email me (denise AT dreamwidth dot org).

( Accessibility needs survey )

deborah

please forgive me if somebody else is already working on this. I was looking at accessible embedded flash players, and I came across "making video accessible", which talks about, among other things, using SWFObject JavaScript to detect whether or not Flash and/or JavaScript are enabled. If flash is not enabled, the embed is replaced with a link to the object.

I think that would be a huge accessibility win, and it would be one of those accessibility = universal design issues, because I've also seen people who don't have accessibility needs but browse with No Script or an equivalent complain about the way our embeds work.

What other people think? I haven't looked at the embed code at all, and I admit I am incredibly ignorant about the way multimedia works in general.

zvi

Access Camp DC 2010 is this weekend. Registration is open until 5 p.m. Friday.

I went last year, and I think I brought some useful information back to this community. I can't go, and had ignored the e-mails because I knew I couldn't go, but it just occurred to me that possibly one of you guys could make it, so there you go.

denise

Compatibility with Dragon NaturallySpeaking (MSAA)

I do not know enough about MSAA or Dragon to discuss this suggestion intelligently, but I figured you lovely people might, so I am pointing you to it! (I also pointed the OP over here.)