[thelist] site check (accessibility)

[Kasimir K]

Eike Pierstorff scribeva in 2005-11-02 01:16:

> The client supplied some bits of flash, some eye candy for the start 
> page and a flash game .... "you need a flash plugin and at least one
> good eye to use this". I'm looking for something that's meaningful to
> a blind person and not actually offensive.

How about "a visual game requiring flash plugin"?

> And as a word of warning, the flash movie on 
> the start page will eat up all memory on your computer in approximately 
> 60 seconds.

Didn't devour my memory, but sure is amazing how much processor cycles 
moving a couple snow flakes takes :-)

The the right hand side flashes has one funny side effect: it covers the 
title-tooltips of Impressum and Weihnukka.

> choose one with a radio button. ... User agents are supposed to preselect
> the first element if none is selected

Incorrect. Or was correct, but ain't no more - from current spec[0]:
"If no radio button in a set sharing the same control name is initially 
"on", user agent behavior for choosing which control is initially "on" 
is undefined."
And:
"Since user agent behavior differs, authors should ensure that in each 
set of radio buttons that one is initially "on"."

The initial "on" could be "no answer" or smthing.

> people said that definition lists shouldn't be used for images because 
> this makes semtically no sense, other people said definition lists 
> should be used because they are semantically the most meaningful markup 
> for this. It is at times like this that I feel the phrase "semantically 
> meaningful"  should be required to be accompanied by some sort of
> elaborate explanation - it seems that it's sometimes just used to end an 
> argument.

Yep, I too often feel that "semantically meaningful" has no semantic 
meaning... Now please do correct me here if I'm wrong or mistaken, but 
meanings of (x)html elements are defined by the w3c's (x)html-specs - 
and only by those. And if we look what it's said there:
"Definition lists, created using the DL element, generally consist of a 
series of term/definition pairs (although definition lists may have 
other applications)."
To my eye it seems that the specs are fairly flexible regarding the 
semantics - "term/definition pairs or something else".

Maybe more fruitful approach to the choice of semantically correct mark 
up would be to ensure, that no incorrect mark up is used - instead of 
pursuing for the one and only correct mark up, which makes all other 
mark ups unholly and evil...

I mean, does it really matter that much, if a navigation is ordered or 
unordered list of links, or even definition list of available pages... 
If it is a list of links (especially with an id relating to navigation) 
the it's pretty clear to any user - and at least it's then not a table :-)


.k


[0]http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#radio