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16/06/2006
10:30 - 11:30
Beyond a Code Audit
by
Robin Christopherson

Amazon
Looking at checkpoint 1.1 of WCAG - labelling images
HomePage Reader
Amazon last year was lots of unlabeled graphical tabs, arguably key navigation. That's what it's been like most of the year… A few months ago…

They labeled those tabs… With exactly the same Amazon.co.uk text. A few days ago, they changed again, with null alt tags. If you have no alt in a link, it's too important to ignore, so it defaults to teh original garbage.

No skip to content link, so no way of getting past it all.

If this is all labelled, it's much better.

On to things that aren't included in a code audit based on WCAG…

Flash:
There are checkpoints referring to making dynamic content accessible, but there is no detail in the guidelines. Without these, you'd go to the manuf. (Adobe). Do that later, though.

Voice recog:
With voice recog, the user should be able to say what they see… Without alt text, this isn't possible. 

Stimorol is Flash. Trying to click a link with voice recog. Flash breaks this, so have to resort to mouse grid to zone in on a link.

In WCAG, there isn't a huge amount on Flash/AJAX… In the Flash Accessibility presentation from Macromedia PM, number of 'issues' with this.
* No captioning/alternative
* No tooltips: have to guess what the buttons do from appearance.
* Dynamic content isn't going to be refreshed automatically in the virtual page the screenreader is accessing. 
* Colour contrast isn't great: white text on pale orange, white text on pale grey

JavaScript changes page, have to refresh. JS/Flash inherently troublesome but more powerful. Think about content, test it. See what happens to access tech. Otherwise, have to clearly signpost a JS-free version. Not averse to using JS, but gotta be accessible.



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Authors:
Steve Marshall: http://nascentguruism.com/