[20695] in APO-L
Blind Brothers? (was Re: [APO-L] My 2 Cents (and change) on the
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen D. Gravrock)
Wed Jul 14 11:19:29 1999
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 08:09:25 -0700
Reply-To: "Stephen D. Gravrock" <gravrock@GOCOUGS.WSU.EDU>
From: "Stephen D. Gravrock" <gravrock@GOCOUGS.WSU.EDU>
To: APO-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
In-Reply-To: <000c01becd57$2231f220$2101060a@iga.state.in.us>
Gee, someone left this soapbox just sitting here...
I'm not concerned about speed so much as the fact that that the new design
is inaccessible to some of our Brothers. (I ass-u-me that there are some
blind people in APO.)
About the only way for a blind person to browse the Web is to use Lynx in
combination with speech-to-text software. Lynx is a text-only browser
which by its nature lacks certain capabilities. It cannot display images,
it cannot handle frames, and it cannot handle java or javascript.
It's possible to design a site which uses frames, images, java, and
javascript yet can still be navigated by Lynx users:
- Use the NOFRAMES tag to provide a version useable by browsers that do
not support frames
- Use alt tags for image links: <a href="chapter/"><img src="logo.jpg"
alt="Chapter website"></a> (and ideally for all images)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
- Provide alternate methods if you use java or javascript for navigation
A quick perusal of the new website shows: use of frames without an
alternate version, use of image links without ALT tags, and use of
javascript for navigation without providing an alternate method. The old
site had none of these problems. I'm disappointed that the new site is
unusable by some of our Brothers, and I'm dismayed (as usual, it's very
common) that someone is charging money to build websites without bothering
to learn about accessible page design. (And yes, I will address this to
the appropriate people as soon as I figure out who they are.)
I agree that the new design is quite slick visually, but that doesn't
count for much if you can't see it.
FN: I'd strongly urge those of you who maintain your chapter's websites to
learn a little about how to make them accessible and browser-independent.
See <http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/>. Always be sure to test your
pages with a variety of browsers, especially Lynx. If you don't have
access to Lynx on your school's systems, telnet to lynx.bob.bofh.org and
use the public client there.
Regards,
Steve
