March 20, 200818 yr Im increasingly aware that websites must be accessible to everyone - as such I wondered if any of you use screen readers to test your sites? Also I read about colour blindness testers for websites - are they accurate etc.? Anyways your thoughts are most welcome
March 20, 200818 yr I've used the reader built into OS X in the past, which had some quite amusing results as it was trying to read my old websites. I haven't personally tried JAWS or any of the big software, but I make sure I don't put anything in the code that I know will break screen readers, and I make sure everything is in order when CSS is turned off.
March 20, 200818 yr Personally I think that as its a law, it should be more readily available to us for testing - I've never even come across a screen reader application
March 20, 200818 yr Jaws has a huge price tag which puts most developers off buying it - about £500 notes for one licence. There have been a few efforts to the developers to provide a developer version but they have fallen on deaf ears. Making a screen reader accesible site isn't rocket science, just good discipline with HTML markup. If you want an excellent example of a blind person using a screen reader watch the video at http://webstock.org.nz/past/recordings.php and look for the video presentation by Darren Fittler - stick with it and you'll learn more about accessibility in 30 minutes that you would imagine! As for colourblind testing - ask me, I'm colourblind as a bat
March 20, 200818 yr the prices for screen readers are crazy! I was doing an essay on accessibility a few weeks ago and came across bog standard ones with prices that were sky high. I think they should be made available to designers and developers as it is the law.
March 20, 200818 yr As it is the law. I've never heard that sites should be accessible by law. Could you/anyone explain?
March 20, 200818 yr There is a law in the UK called the Disability Discrimination Act, although I've not heard of anyone being prosecuted over it yet. There is a court case going on in America, with Target being sued over accessibility.
March 20, 200818 yr The Olympics a few years back were sued by a person Bruce Maguire under the Disability Discrimination Act and the man won. It will just be a matter of time until a big company in the UK or USA is sued then there will be a massive cry for web designers that can make accessible web pages. http://www.contenu.nu/socog.html
March 20, 200818 yr Author Jaws has a huge price tag which puts most developers off buying it - about £500 notes for one licence. There have been a few efforts to the developers to provide a developer version but they have fallen on deaf ears. Making a screen reader accesible site isn't rocket science, just good discipline with HTML markup. If you want an excellent example of a blind person using a screen reader watch the video at http://webstock.org.nz/past/recordings.php and look for the video presentation by Darren Fittler - stick with it and you'll learn more about accessibility in 30 minutes that you would imagine! Thanks man, il check that vid out! Whoever brings out the legislation should also bring out a free testing software for developers, I mean if you could be taken to court over it I don't see why not! Going back to what you said bluedreamer, I think il just carry on making sure that my pages are legible with everything turned off. As for colourblind testing - ask me, I'm colourblind as a bat I think I will I thats cool
March 20, 200818 yr I can code fully accessible sites, but I've never really heard about this. I've noticed that public national sites in Norway are fully accessible, so that must be because of this law. The only thing I reacted to was the talk over blindness testers and such.
March 20, 200818 yr I can code fully accessible sites, but I've never really heard about this. I've noticed that public national sites in Norway are fully accessible, so that must be because of this law. The only thing I reacted to was the talk over blindness testers and such. yeah the blindness testing is screen readers and the such, but if you follow web standards and make sure your code is valid then that should be fine.
March 20, 200818 yr Author OOOh! iv just become a dedicated member! at last Mhuhahahahahahaaaaaaaaaa!
March 20, 200818 yr Do you guys not think that making links the same color is okay as long as you have a clear style differentiation (such as emboldening it)? I tend to favor that approach given the overall design, and it works out fine.
March 20, 200818 yr That could just look like bold, underlined text, though. The tried and tested method is to make the link as obviously distinct from the content as possible, with a nicely contrasting change on mouse-over, obviously while keeping it all inline with the colour scheme.
March 20, 200818 yr Yes there's a reason why *unstyled* plain text is black and link text is underlined blue - this combo offer the maximum contrast when on a white background. The default link state covers all scenarios for all colourblind impairments so it makes sense to use that as a base model.
March 21, 200818 yr The "Web developer"-plugin for Firefox lets you display styles for print or handheld. I've just finished off the print version of my portifolio which is soon to be leased. Do you guys use something like display: none; on those elements you don't want on your site? I've done that to my menu, some of the text like "postet in category x" and some other things.
March 21, 200818 yr I can code fully accessible sites, but I've never really heard about this. I've noticed that public national sites in Norway are fully accessible, so that must be because of this law. The only thing I reacted to was the talk over blindness testers and such. I meant to look that one up. I'd be very interested to find out if there is a law in Norway for this. Or if it's just the policy for the gouvement sites.
March 21, 200818 yr I can't find a law. But there's a mission goal from the Norwegian gouverment to make all the gouverment sites accessible to everyone by 2009. http://www.slideshare.net/sveino/accessibi...blic-web-sites/ http://www.universell-utforming.miljo.no/a...el.shtml?id=237 http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad/Tema/....html?id=439499 (Some links in Norwegian. Interesting read for Norwegians though. I'm reading the PDF with the mission statement.)
March 21, 200818 yr Jaws has a huge price tag which puts most developers off buying it - about £500 notes for one licence. There have been a few efforts to the developers to provide a developer version but they have fallen on deaf ears. Making a screen reader accesible site isn't rocket science, just good discipline with HTML markup. If you want an excellent example of a blind person using a screen reader watch the video at http://webstock.org.nz/past/recordings.php and look for the video presentation by Darren Fittler - stick with it and you'll learn more about accessibility in 30 minutes that you would imagine! As for colourblind testing - ask me, I'm colourblind as a bat I'm only getting a 0.3K p/s when I try to download the moveclip. It's like being back in the age of modems, without the entertaining dialup sounds.
Create an account or sign in to comment