Preparing site for people with disabilities

	Home Register Search Help Login

Sponsors

Hosting from $3.99 per month!

Shopping Cart Software
Ecommerce software integrated into Frontpage, Dreamweaver and Golive templates. No monthly fees and available in ASP and PHP versions. dd

Website Templates
We also have a wide selection of Dreamweaver, Expression Web and Frontpage templates as well as webmaster tools and CSS layouts.

Frontpage website templates
Creative Website Templates for FrontPage, Dreamweaver, Flash, SwishMax

Search Forums

Recent Posts

Todays Posts
Most Active posts
Posts since last visit
My Recent Posts
Mark posts read

Preparing site for people with disabilities

View related threads: (in this forum | in all forums)

Logged in as: Guest

Users viewing this topic: none

Printable Version

All Forums >> Web Development >> General Web Development >> Preparing site for people with disabilities

Page: [1]


_gail Posts: 2876 From: So FL Status: offline	Preparing site for people with disabilities - 4/21/2003 8:05:44 I' m designing a site for disabled individuals. Any tips on how to prepare the site? For example, I' m using alt tags but should I include screen tips also? thanks, gail _____________________________ Digicamhelp - Easiest place on the web to learn about Digit@l Cameras & Photography


Gil Posts: 7533 From: North Carolina, USA Status: offline	RE: Preparing site for people with disabilities - 4/21/2003 8:28:01 gail, Here' s the Govt. section 508 standards: http://www.section508.gov/ Also, a good place to test for compliance: http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp _____________________________ Gil Harvey, 1947-2004 (in reply to _gail)


_gail Posts: 2876 From: So FL Status: offline	RE: Preparing site for people with disabilities - 4/21/2003 8:44:20 Thanks Gil. The information is great but, at first blush, it seems like I' ll need a college degree in the field to understand it all. I will read some of it but right now I' m just looking for some basic tips or, if they exist, references that are not as thick as the novel " War and Peace." This is not a requirement by the client. gail _____________________________ Digicamhelp - Easiest place on the web to learn about Digit@l Cameras & Photography (in reply to Gil)


john40004 Posts: 1346 From: Bardstown KY USA Status: offline	RE: Preparing site for people with disabilities - 4/21/2003 11:33:09 Hi Gail, Reflect gave me some good links here: Alt Tags _____________________________ If you lead a good life and say your prayers at night, when you die you' ll find yourself in Kentucky. The home of fast women and beautiful horses! (in reply to _gail)


slbergh Posts: 322 Joined: 11/8/2002 From: Iowa Status: offline	RE: Preparing site for people with disabilities - 5/7/2003 15:15:50 I' m in the midst of making one of my sites accessible, too. Here' s a little advice: 1) If you have an image that is important to the content, use the title tag (same way an alt tag is used) and fully describe the image. 2) Watch your use of colors! When color is used, avoid using red, green, brown, gray and purple, especially next to, on top of or changing to any of those same colors. 3) Put a " skip navigation" link near the top of the page and bookmark where the main content begins. This way, those using screen readers don' t have to sit through your navigation listing each time they go to a new page. You can make the link the same color as your background if you don' t want it to display on the page. A screen reader will still pick it up, though. 4) Remember to avoid using " Click Here" or " More Information" as stand alone links. (in reply to _gail)


DRatliff Posts: 20 Joined: 5/6/2003 Status: offline	I give talks on accessibility... here are some links - 5/7/2003 16:07:47 I work part-time for a university as a Web Accessibility Specialist. " slbergh" gave you really good advice. Check out my University' s pages for help: http://iatservices.missouri.edu/adaptive/webdesign.html Also, stay away from frames, and avoid using color to add meaning. (For example, if sale items are in red and regular-priced items are in green, you need another way to let people with visual disabilities know that.) Also, made tables widths relative (e.g. 100%) instead of fixed (eg 800). That way the table " flexes" with the screen size. Hope that helps! Diana _____________________________ Diana Ratliff, the BizCard Guru Shouldn't your business card work as hard as YOU do? (in reply to _gail)


DRatliff Posts: 20 Joined: 5/6/2003 Status: offline	RE: Preparing site for people with disabilities - 5/7/2003 16:12:10 Just thought of something else. I' m not sure if you' re designing for a specific type of disability, but if so, keep a few other things in mind. I work with several people with physical handicaps. When you have little or no fine motor control, it' s hard to click on tiny text or links that are very close together. In addition, mouseovers are problematic. If you don' t KNOW there' s something under an image, and it' s a problem to move your mouse over it " just to check" , you may miss it altogether. Diana again! _____________________________ Diana Ratliff, the BizCard Guru Shouldn't your business card work as hard as YOU do? (in reply to _gail)


slbergh Posts: 322 Joined: 11/8/2002 From: Iowa Status: offline	RE: Preparing site for people with disabilities - 5/7/2003 16:23:34 Now I remember the other last piece of advice I was going to give! If you' re using CSS on your pages, don' t specify absolute text sizes. This way, if someone needs to boost up the text size on the screen, they can. Diana- Looks like we' re neighbors! I' m an ISU Communications Specialist (translation: what they call someone who knows both print AND web). They' re just starting a big push here for accessibility and I plan to be ahead of the wave if possible. _____________________________ Digital data lasts forever...or 5 years, whichever comes first! (in reply to _gail)

_gail

Posts: 2876
From: So FL
Status: offline

RE: Preparing site for people with disabilities - 5/7/2003 17:02:46

Good stuff here! Thank you.

quote:

3) Put a " skip navigation" link near the top of the page and bookmark where the main content begins. This way, those using screen readers don' t have to sit through your navigation listing each time they go to a new page. You can make the link the same color as your background if you don' t want it to display on the page. A screen reader will still pick it up, though.

4) Remember to avoid using " Click Here" or " More Information" as stand alone links.

Can you please explain points 3 & 4 a bit more? particularly " skip navigation" link as I' m not quite sure what this means, or even how to construct it. May be simple but it' s something that is not readily apparent to me from the verbiage.

quote:

http://iatservices.missouri.edu/adaptive/webdesign.html

Great info; I love the simple but very effective design too!

gail

_____________________________

Digicamhelp - Easiest place on the web to learn about Digit@l Cameras & Photography

(in reply to slbergh)


slbergh Posts: 322 Joined: 11/8/2002 From: Iowa Status: offline	RE: Preparing site for people with disabilities - 5/8/2003 11:02:59 It might be easier to show you what I mean about the skip link than to explain it. I threw together two quick pages to demonstrate. Go ahead and do a view source on the pages to see exactly what I did. www.ehs.iastate.edu/skipvisible.htm www.ehs.iastate.edu/skipinvisible.htm Screen readers generally read the HTML code on a page, rather than the page itself, so even if the link isn' t visible, the screen reader will still pick it up. For tip 4:: Don' ts: Click here for more information on FrontPage. FrontPage is great for beginners or experts. More information... Do: More information on FrontPage is available. The first links aren' t descriptive enough. A good rule of thumb is to print out any page you' re designing and read it aloud. If it reads well as a regular printed page, it should be fine. < Message edited by slbergh -- 5/8/2003 11:11 AM > _____________________________ Digital data lasts forever...or 5 years, whichever comes first! (in reply to _gail)


_gail Posts: 2876 From: So FL Status: offline	RE: Preparing site for people with disabilities - 5/8/2003 11:24:06 quote: It might be easier to show you what I mean about the skip link than to explain it. I threw together two quick pages to demonstrate. www.ehs.iastate.edu/skipvisible.htm www.ehs.iastate.edu/skipinvisible.htm slbergh. this is very, very interesting. Besides feeling as thick as a California Redwood right now, understand that I' m no html genius. So, do I understand it correctly? The Skip Navigation Link as a bookmark which brings the visitor right to the main body of the text, so they don' t have to read all the html code for the hyperlinks. I do understand about hiding the link. thanks again! gail _____________________________ Digicamhelp - Easiest place on the web to learn about Digit@l Cameras & Photography (in reply to slbergh)


gorilla Posts: 2974 From: Denmark Status: offline	RE: Preparing site for people with disabilities - 5/8/2003 13:28:59 I saw this title topic and was interested so: I suggest that you be very descriptive for your ALT texts. Therefore " picture of flower" is not as good as: " The image is of a red rose beaded with early morning dew, with green foliage in the background much of the background is in soft focus" I have worked in the past with a blind student helping her to learn Danish and she liked that sort of ALT text very much because it helped her " see" the sites. Here is my enlish language links on this type of thing: http://www.w3.org/WAI/ http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/ http://trace.wisc.edu/world/web/ http://www.rnib.org.uk/digital/hints.htm I think you will find this one also very useful because it has many links to other sites and to tools etc. http://www.webable.com/ I hope these are helpful MVH Karsten Junior silverback spokesgorilla filling in as spokesgorilla until Thor (AKA " Father" ) comes back from assignment. (in reply to _gail)


gorilla Posts: 2974 From: Denmark Status: offline	RE: Preparing site for people with disabilities - 5/8/2003 14:01:37 OOPS!!! I nearly forgot use the <strong></stong> tag instead of bold and <em> </em> instead of italics because screen readers often treat them differently. At least that is what we were told in our course in the gymnasium (=USA highschool) but that was some years ago and I do not know where my notebooks for that year are. Perhaps they ate each other when I brought them to my storage place. Or maybe they were eaten by my school soccer playing clothes. Maybe I should stop and go home now and eat or I will start to eat the desks .. K PS: Try balthisar cascade for css it is for windows and it lets you use the voice attribute. I have only used it once or twice because my environment is Unix and Linux but I think it was a good program. http://www.balthisar.com/cascade/cascade.html K (in reply to _gail)


slbergh Posts: 322 Joined: 11/8/2002 From: Iowa Status: offline	RE: Preparing site for people with disabilities - 5/8/2003 14:09:29 gail, That' s pretty much how it works. Oh, and give yourself a little bit of time to let it all sink in. It seems a little overwhelming at first, but if you start implementing the accessibility " standards" one step at a time, it' s really not that bad. _____________________________ Digital data lasts forever...or 5 years, whichever comes first! (in reply to _gail)


DRatliff Posts: 20 Joined: 5/6/2003 Status: offline	RE: THE site for info, in my opinion - 5/8/2003 14:23:02 Is http://www.webaim.org EXCELLENT site, great (searchable) discussion forum, lots of tutorials. Whenever we give talks on accessibility, THIS is the place we tell them to go. _____________________________ Diana Ratliff, the BizCard Guru Shouldn't your business card work as hard as YOU do? (in reply to _gail)


Non-Profit Posts: 388 From: Virginia, USA Status: offline	RE: Preparing site for people with disabilities - 5/8/2003 21:30:41 Gail, I wholeheartedly agree with Diana. www.webaim.org is a great site. I get info from there all the time and their forum/listserv is amazing. Remember that sites should be designed keeping accesibility in mind. <aside> WebAIM is Web Accesibility In Mind </aside> So trying to go back and make an older site accessible can be a lot of work. But it is just good practice (business and otherwise) to make your website accessible to all. It can seem daunting to the author, but it' s well worth the effort. Tony < Message edited by Non-Profit -- 5/8/2003 9:33 PM > (in reply to _gail)


caz Posts: 3626 Joined: 10/10/2001 From: Somewhere south of Chester, UK Status: offline	RE: Preparing site for people with disabilities - 5/11/2003 8:28:04 I should just like to add another reference for you, which also covers an add-on for converting pdf files to text files for screen readers. This is a UK charity which has done excellent work in drawing attention to the requirements of users who need adaptive technologies and the impact that should have on web design. [link=]www.abilitynet.org.uk/content/home.htm[/link] All the posts here will form a great reference tool for future design. Cheers Carol (in reply to _gail)