jadelennox: Oracle with a headset: Heroes Use Headsets (gimp: heroes use headsets)
jadelennox ([personal profile] jadelennox) wrote in [site community profile] dw_accessibility2009-08-10 05:13 pm

suggestion for style documentation

I'm curious as to whether or not I am the only person who ends up having accessibility issues when people modify their styles to change the text of basic features. Specifically:

1. It's bad enough when the text goes back and forth between two different standards (e.g. "user info" versus "profile").
2. It's worse when the text is something the style designer came up with to be original but which still carries clear meaning (e.g. "about me").
3. It's extremely difficult when the text is all flavor and doesn't convey much meaning (e.g. "happy tracks in the sand").

Am I the only person for whom this is an accessibility issue? If this is a general issue and not just me, perhaps we could write some documentation and propose it to the style team as guidelines for what kind of textual changes are worth avoiding if you really care about accessibility in your style. Since end-users can change those texts, not just style designers, we could come up with something brief and nonintimidating for the customization pages.

(By the way, I know I was working on a couple of open accessibility tickets, and I vanished for several months due to personal issues. I'm back as of this week, and have started looking at those tickets again. Sorry for the vanishing.)
afuna: Cat under a blanket. Text: "Cats are just little people with Fur and Fangs" (Default)

[personal profile] afuna 2009-08-24 03:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Belatedly, but some guidelines as to whether navigation, etc, (Recent Entries, Profile, etc links) may be placed before the main content would also be good.

I am looking into it, jumping of from the links to WebAIM in one of your other entries and it looks like some people are against, some people are for? I'm trying to gauge whether it would be a good thing, a bad thing, or a neutral thing for some styles to have navigation links or other content in between the header and entries content, and the feedback I've seen makes me lean towards: as much as possible, no, but some may find it useful.