Adrian Higginbotham
Project manager, Standards
British Educational Communications and Technology Agency - BECTA
Tel: Direct dial 024 7679 7333 - Becta switchboard 02476-416994.
Email: Adrian.Higginbotham@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: <http://www.becta.org.uk/>http://www.becta.org.uk/
BECTA, Millburn Hill Road, Science Park, Coventry, CV4 7JJ
----------
From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Graham Page
Sent: 16 November 2006 19:23
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [access-uk] Re: Google is more accessible from today
supernova does as well as does IBM homepage reader though this is not
really a screenreader. I believe System Access does as well.
Regards
Graham
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:adrian.higginbotham@xxxxxxxxxxxx>Adrian Higginbotham
To: <mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2006 4:43 PM
Subject: [access-uk] Re: Google is more accessible from today
Good to hear that it is more than just one product that support navigation
by heading, can anyone advance on JFW and W_E? of course if more sites
like Google implement structural mark-up then other assistive technology
venders may follow suit and this would be a positive thing. What worries
me about the Search results as Headings as implemented by Google is not so
much that they have done it, afterall so many people have already said how
helpful it is, and I am indeed finding it is making my own life much
easier, but rather that the Web development community at large may latch
on to the idea that in order to make your Website accessible to
screenreader users you should mark-up important information in an #h'
tag. of course I might be too sinical and actually Google are leading the
world in using structural mark-up something which many of us have been
campaigning for for a long long time and not just on the Web. here's
hoping that every document author follows their example. Let us however
stay on their case and make sure that such a useful tag is used
appropriately otherwise it will sease to be effective. My concerns are in
the main based on some work I did with a consultant a year or so ago who
had used a screenreader user to test some of their work. He had watched
the individual navigating the Web for a while and concluded that in the
main he did not use site navigation but rather tended to read content and
follow links from there in, often following a very round about route to
reach his destination. His particular solution to this was to enhance the
access support in the content (good news) but to let loose with the
role-over drop down menus and other javascript dependant objects within
navigation structures purely because his experience was that this would
have little impact. Yes that was one developer and one insidence but it
does demonstrate the power behind messages such as "thanks for putting
headers on every paragraph". developers like the rest of us look for easy
solutions to difficult problems and I do feel that as a community we need
to be cautious about over simplifying what are lets be honest complex issues.
Similar examples are evident as far back as the early days of the WAI
guidance, particular ones which spring to mind are the RNIB advocating the
use of the star symbol (*) as an alt tag for esthetic images rather than a
null value. Viewing this on a scree in a training room the star looked
rather like a letter "x" and for a year or two there was a spat of UK
Websites with sporadic xs' here and there for no obvious reason.
So yes lets offer praise where praise is due but lets also temper it with
a reminder that there is more work still to be done - has anyone for
example had cause to use the Google audio capchure feature lately -
excellent that they found a work around for the visual only capchure but
I'm not sure that the numbers spoken over a garbled background noise is
satisfactory, has anyone with hearing loss tried to use this ?
Adrian Higginbotham
Project manager, Standards
British Educational Communications and Technology Agency - BECTA
Tel: Direct dial 024 7679 7333 - Becta switchboard 02476-416994.
Email: Adrian.Higginbotham@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: <http://www.becta.org.uk/>http://www.becta.org.uk/
BECTA, Millburn Hill Road, Science Park, Coventry, CV4 7JJ
----------
From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Tristram Llewellyn
Sent: 16 November 2006 11:15
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [access-uk] Re: Google is more accessible from today
"is it an improvement to accessibility or just a confluence by design or
miss-fortune of one feature within one popular screenreading product and
the semantics of a single website."
In the spirit of discussion I would argue clearly not, as more than one
screen reader navigates by headings for the rather more academically
erudite and upright purpose that the WAI WCAG may aprove of. Rigorous
self contained interpretation of guidelines is one thing, and real life is
another, and there is a danger in thinking that committees that make up
WAI WCAG guidelines can do everything. There is, if you want to think of
things that rigorously no such thing as technology independant
accessibility, it is in fact a web of interconnected technologies and
standards. Even assuming such bodies can think of or decide upon some
other kind of structural mark up that would have this effect, a screen
reader or for that matter another type of accessibility aid would still
have to be coded for this if the guidelines are to remain as such rather
than a top down literal standard that all websites should follow.
Regards.
Tristram Llewellyn
Sight and Sound Technology
Technical Support
<http://www.sightandsound.co.uk>www.sightandsound.co.uk
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