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December, 2010

  1. #BS8878 making the web MORE accessible – picking through the bones

    December 9, 2010 by Robin Englebright

    So on Tuesday I created three identical posts using three different editors to see if there was a marked difference in the accessibility and structure of the code posterous created from them.

    I spent some time on the train yesterday looking through the source, and was quite surpised.

    The posts themselves were almost identical, and startlingly the actual content was just one line in 1600.

    Just 1200 characters in the 44000 making up the code for one post were actual content. This may not be such a shock to younger readers, but I was schooled in html at a time when it was usual to hand code, and when Dreamweaver was considered by many to be a bit of a cheat. The ratio of content to “fluff” seems at odds with Tim Berners Lee’s idea for the web to be a source of data, upon which we impose the way we wish to see it. Of course I’m an old duffer, and no little of the underpinnings of the modern web, looks like I’m about to start learning.

    From my reading of the code I’m inferring that the posterous engine is efficiently parsing the incoming post, and then dropping it into a big bloaty presentation layer. In the review of the site, @ahiggi points out that many sites with interfaces customised by the creator don’t provide a firm structure to gauge accessibility upon, as small changes to the theme can have a big impact on the end user. It feels like playing jenga, if I change one aspect, I’m unsure of the effect on the stack.

    SO, what can BS8878 do to help? Well starting tomorrow, I’ll work through the advice and see if it can effectively help me solve my problem. I have a feeling this is going to take MORE than a week, and it will mean learning more about .css than I currently do.

    What an adventure.

    Code_block_posterous_using_web_editor

    [screenshot of code block from source for posterous site]


  2. #BS8878 making the web MORE accessible -posted by web form

    December 7, 2010 by Robin Englebright

    This is a test posting to the posterous blog using the online web form as the editor.

    I’m including a picture which I’m uploading, along with the audio file.

    Once I’ve posted from all three sources I’ll look at the page code and see if I can determine whether any one source produces more accessible code.

    The_codes

    bs8878_test_file.mp3
    Listen on Posterous

  3. #BS8878 making the web MORE accessible – posted from apple MAIL

    December 7, 2010 by Robin Englebright

    This is a test posting to the posterous blog using apple MAIL as the editor.
    I’m including a picture, which I’ve dragged into the body of the email.

    The_codes

    I’m also attaching an audio file as an attachment.
    Once I’ve posted from three different sources I’ll look at the page code.

    Test by Rob
    Listen on Posterous

  4. #BS8878 making the web MORE accessible -posted from Outlook

    December 7, 2010 by Robin Englebright

    This is a test posting to the posterous blog using Outlook as the editor.

    I’m including a picture, which I’ve attached, as Outlook doesn’t seem to want me to drag the image into the body of the email.  

    I’m also attaching an audio file as an attachment.

    Once I’ve posted from three different sources, I’ll look at the page code.

    The_codes

    Test by Rob
    Listen on Posterous

  5. #BS8878 making the web MORE accessible

    December 7, 2010 by Robin Englebright

    One of the comments that struck me from the screen reader review of this site that @ahiggi carried out, was that two similar components on the page showed different behaviour. In the case of the review there were two Audioboo objects.

    It would be useful to know if these differences are due to the source of the media or the means by which it was added to Posterous.”

    One of the most useful things about posterous, is that posts to the blog really ARE posts. You compose an email, send it to post@posterous.com, and it does the rest… There’s also a web interface where posts can be composed, in either a rich text editor (like this post), OR as html. So on posts where you include some embed code, you might want to drop the code into the page where it’s needed.

    I thought I’d create a simple post, with a bit of text, an image and maybe an audioboo object and see how the code looks when the posts are generated through a number of different editors.

    1: the posterous site web editor

    2: a post from Microsoft Outlook 2007 with html enabled

    3: a post from Apple Mail with html enabled

     

     


  6. #BS8878 making the web accessible

    December 6, 2010 by Robin Englebright

    To support world usability day 2010 Hanona.org offered 10 half hour Website reviews by resident screenreader user Adrian Higginbotham. I took up @ahiggi ‘s kind offer, and on 12th November he reviewed this site. Here is the report. I’m going to have a look at some of the issues identified and see how the guidance in BS8878 might help me deal with them.

    Hanona

    Hanona.org is a network of online and education professionals who believe in the power of technology and the importance of the user. If you’d like  to talk to us about the contents of this report, or any of your Websites or projects do contact us via the details on our site.

    This review:

    This review is not an audit against any particular set of accessibility guidelines or standards but rather is an account of one individual’s experience of using a screenreader to visit your Website.

    This report can be used as one indicator of things your Website does well, and areas you may need to look at with regard to access for older or disabled users.  The review was carried out using MS Internet explorer 8, and the Jaws for windows screenreader version 11.  Jaws isn’t the most standards compliant screenreader but is the most common by market share.  If you want to try out a screenreader for yourself then I recommend NVDA, available from www.NVDA-project.org and works with MS Internet Explorer, or Firefox. (not Safari or Opera). 

    Review of http://rob-work.posterous.com/ 12/11/2010

    First impressions:

    I’m not familiar with Posterous so spent 5 or 10 minutes exploring Posterous.com getting to understand it’s features and purpose before reviewing your personalised area. 

    Structure and semantics:

    The site has plenty of structural elements on each page which give a screenreader plenty of anchor points on the page to jump between for the purposes of navigation. This is useful in that it means I don’t need to listen to every line of text on the page but can, as soon as I’ve built up a minds eye picture of the page move very quickly between areas of each page. 

    On this particular page however all sections and posts are indicated with the same header1 element. While this does in part assist navigation it would be more helpful if headers used ordinal numbers which reflected their hierarchy within the page structure.  Strangely each post does in fact seem to be marked by 2 headers, the first containing only a ‘0’ and the second the name of the post.  This is slightly confusing and irritating at first but as soon as I realised that it happened consistently at the start of each new post it stopped being a problem. 

    Other structural elements:

    The page contains a frame with the name ‘f2a25caa59958ac’ which is not particularly meaningful in that it does not tell me the purpose of the frame nor what it contains.

    Within that frame sits a Flash object within which my screenreader can not detect any content such as text, buttons etc.  Based on experience I have assumed this frame to carry an advert.

    The page also contains a number of other Flash objects where media has been associated with a post.  These objects show some irregular behaviour in that within a  post containing a Audioboo demo individual buttons are identified by my screenreader and can be activated from the keyboard, although the buttons themselves have not been given text labels so are reported only as ‘button 1’ ‘button 2’ etc.  However, in the post on Cloudworks virtual fieldtrip, although there is only 1 button identified, it is cleary labelled ‘play’.  It would be useful to know if these differences are due to the source of the media or the means by which it was added to Posterous.

    Each post also contains a ‘Twitter for websites’ and a ‘Facebook like’ frame. Both are clearly named, and the actionable elements (buttons) with each named and actionable from the keyboard.  Having so many frames with the same name per page could be confusing if navigating around the page by frame elements and it is mildly frustrating always having to jump past these but as each new post is marked with a header tag to do so is simple. 

    Post content

    Post content including Links to other sites or to download resources all work exactly as would be expected. 

    Page / site features

    The RSS subscribe link is cleared label with text (not always the case) and moving between pages is beautifully simple using either the in page controls or simply by adjusting the page number in the address bar. 

    Summary:

    Considering that that Posterous is a mixed media, user generated content site the experience of access to your pages is good. No issues that an experienced screenreader user can’t easily and quickly adapt too and nothing that is likely to catch them out or prevent them from accessing information on the page.  However as is usually the case with user customisable interfaces, many of the features comment on in this report, positive and otherwise may be attributable to the theme you have chosen.  Change this and the user experience may vary significantly.

    About the author:

    I’m 36 years old and a programme manager in the public sector.  I live in the west midlands (UK) with my partner and our two young children.  I’ve been totally blind since the age of 4 and have grown up with technology and learned through my education and career to depend on access to it.  I have used screenreaders to access the Web and online services for over 12 years.


  7. #BS8878 Accessible web, all next week on this blog

    December 3, 2010 by Robin Englebright

    December 3rd is the United Nations International Day of Persons with Disabilities. http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=1540 and it’s a good starting point for a review of web accessibility.Next week I’m going to be looking in detail at the new standard from BSI, BS8878, which updates PAS78: Good Practice Guide in Commissioning Accessible websites.

    It covers the process of making web products accessible, rather than getting hung up on technical issues which are dealt with fully elsewhere. 

    There are a number of events throughout next week around the launch, including a free morning event in London on the 7th, with Jonathan Hassell who chaired the BSI IST45 committee.
    The London event is now full, but there may be space at the free webinar from AbilityNet <a href="https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/763164576.
    https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/763164576.<br /> Follow the action using twitter hashtag #BS8878.

    http://twitter.com/#search?q=BS8878

    Twapperkeepr archive: http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/BS8878

    Eduserv Summarisr: http://summarizr.labs.eduserv.org.uk/?hashtag=&keyword=BS8878 

     


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