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This page documents an attempt at obtaining the WAI (W3 Accessibility Initiative) Triple A standards in accessibility, as laid out by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) whilst designing a real-world website.
The page itself is an attempt to redesign the computertorture website format to allow the original documents to be laid up in the most accessible format possible for the widest possible audience. The computertorture network have requested that I document my notes as the redesign is done.
Front-loading information should be a theme throughout each element of the document. This part of the page is also similar to the top half of the front page of a newspaper, it should enable the reader to know whether to read further and, if so, help them to read further.
Here should be a concise and accurate summary of what the page is about. This should be short and to the point, full of info and lots of hypertext links to rest of document.
This section should be a complete and formal aid to fast navigation throughout the document. The reader may only be interested in the results or lessons learnt. Note the "skip navigation" link above to avoid forcing non-visual readers through a long list of links.
The document validates to XHTML 1.0 Strict and has the document type declaration:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
Note the numbering that has just started. Information should be broken into manageable chunks, and numbering is one of the more navigable techniques.
This document was created on a Debian/GNU Linux (http://debian.org)operating system, using Mozilla (http://mozilla.org) as the test browser, and Emacs for the text processing and xml validation. The W3C html online validator at http://validator.w3.org was used for final online testing.
The core techniques for web accessibility as defined by the W3C (http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-TECHS/) are as follows.
Navigation is to be used in a consistent manner.
Links are to be left underlined and blue. The underlining (historical also) saves relying on colour alone.
The destination of each link is described so as to make sense when read out of context. For example:back to the top. This aids people who have links read to them. It cannot be good hearing "click here" 30 times, especially when the reader may not even have a mouse to click with!
If a link is to a different site then this should be made obvious. ie http://flakey.info
Once a file has a public URL it should maintain that URL for the rest of its life as a document. The document should not be moved if at all possible, and if it has to be then if at all possible redirection should be provided.
The permanent nature of public URL files suggests that reasonable thought needs to be put into the directory structure of how to manage the files. The directory structure needs to be capable of expanding without confusing the website structure.
The style of blue underlined links has historically been the standard. This attempt at accessibility will retain this. The colour scheme should be chosen with this in mind.
English is stated as the natural language in the HTML element:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
The content aims to validate to English grammar. This is nowhere near complete in terms of global accessibility, but it does mean that a screen reader can read it correctly. It also means that a translator, automatic or otherwise, has a much better chance of success in translation to other languages.
The clearest and simplest language appropriate is to be used throughout the website.
Personally I feel, with experience of learning foreign languages, that contractions such as I'm (I am) and don't (do not), although useful in conversation and correct, may not aid people who have difficulty reading the language. Also I view many documents in which (after presumed character set changes) I'm reads something like I′m , I m or I#244m. Whereas I am would read I am.
Acronyms are to be expanded verbally the first time they appear on the page, and expanded every time they appear with the <acronym> element i.e. WHO (World Health Organisation) the first time then WHO thereafter.
Presentation is to be kept entirely separate from the content and structure, allowing the document to render correctly without any applied presentation.
Any presentation used is kept as simple and clear as possible.
CSS is to be used to apply all styles. This allows one file to control the appearance of all the pages. Therefore if an alternative style is required, i.e. larger font or different colouring, the relevant style sheet could be served accordingly.
The CSS stylesheet is pulled into the <head> of the document using the line:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css"></link>
The <title>page title</title> is crucial and should meaningfully represent the content, or function, of the page.
Headings are to be used in a consistent manner, starting with <h1>, and with <h2> being a sub heading of <h1> and so on.
Numbering of sections, although tedious and difficult to manage, aids navigation significantly. It is often easiest to add numbering during the end processes of authoring.
Each page is to have an absolute URL link to the homepage, thus if anyone should mirror a page the home link will bring the viewer to the source.
Each page of information or script should have an absolute URL link to the latest version. Thus if anyone copies, or redistributes, the information or code the viewer may trace the latest easily. The latest version link should point to where the managed copy of the information or code resides.
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