RE: Comments on site accessibility

Scott,

(Remember, these are opinions)

Issue 1:
Using the Bobby Validator is a good start, but many of the more subtle items
under the broad heading of "Accessibility" requires more than mechanical
checks... it involves thinking.  For you first question, the reasons why
Bobby would recomend a larger space between adjacent links is primarily for
users with mobility impairements... think users with speech recognition
software, or Arthritis or Parkinsons.  Having two tiny, text links side by
side makes the "Target" for them hard to hit.  In your case, both images are
large enough that it really isn't an issue. If you are really concerned, try
adding some HSPACE to each image to "spread them apart".

Issue 2:
Aha... the tough one.  According to
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=Democratic+Republic+of+Congo
there are a number of "living languages" throughout the Congo.  The above
document lists a number of them, along with 3 letter abbreviations.  There
is no guarantee that any rendering agent will acknowledge them however, and
I believe that the 3 letter language codes are only used in META TAGS (<meta
name="Language_of_Resource" content="eng">) [warrants further research].
The above document also indicates that one of the primary tongues of the
Congo is Lingala, which _does_ have it's own language code: "ln"  Could you
possibley use that?

***********

A quick read of the W3C's site on the LANG attribute
(http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/dirlang.html) shows the following:
	Here are some sample language codes:

	"en": English
	"en-US": the U.S. version of English.
	"en-cockney": the Cockney version of English.
	"i-navajo": the Navajo language spoken by some Native Americans.
	"x-klingon": The primary tag "x" indicates an experimental language tag

The last two of particular note.  While I cannot find a reference to "i"
anywhere I will presume it means "indian-navajo" or "indigenous-navaho";
both however I would think could be pre-empted by you ("i-mokele-mbembe" or
"x-mokele-mbembe").

	<span lang="i-mokele-mbembe">Test</span>
	<span lang="x-mokele-mbembe">Another Test</span>

Again however, there is no guarantee that current rendering engine(s) will
recognize either of these, let alone know what to do with them. But they do
validate through the W3C's validator, so...

"How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"

Issue 3:
Try this: <A href="../../biographies/bios_n.html#norman_scott" title="Scott
Thomas Norman">Scott T. Norman</A>.  If you normally sign you name as Scott
T. Norman, than that's your name.  Do people ask you what the T. stands for
in everyday commerce?  As far as accessibility is concerned, this is a very
minor issue.


John Foliot
Bytown Internet
Ottawa, Ontario



> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-aware-techniques(at)hwg.org
> [mailto:owner-aware-techniques(at)hwg.org]On Behalf Of Scott T. Norman
> Sent: February 12, 2002 4:18 AM
> To: aware-techniques(at)hwg.org
> Subject: Comments on site accessibility
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> I'm in the process of redesigning my cryptozoology site, Cryptozoological
> Realms, as XHTML 1.0 strict and CSS2 and working on making it sure it fits
> the criteria for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 and U.S. Section
> 508 Guidelines.
>
> Taking care of XHTML 1.0 and CSS2 hasn't been hard, though have had some
> frustrations with CSS trying some new stuff, so went back to the basics.
> Though doing the Accessibility is more challenging, as it seems
> that some of
> the rules can be subjective.  I've been using the Bobby validator as a
> reference.
>
> The template page I working on right now is at:
>
> http://64.130.229.225/development/czrealms/english/oceania/austral
ia/country
.html

Would like comments and suggestions as this is the first time I'm doing
accessibility and have some questions. I'm still need to do some more
reading of the guidelines but hoping get some more help here also.


On my page I have images of a flag of Australia and a map of Australia
linked to the company sites that produces those images. I get the following
Priority 3 warning: "Separate adjacent links with more than whitespace."
What do I do to fix this, do I put them in div tags or in table to take care
of this, because I really don't want to use a separate here. Also have same
problems with logos at bottom of page. What is interesting I put "|" between
the logos and still get the error on that line, though them menu I have
passes.

How should I handle marking up different languages, especially if they don't
show up in the ISO 639 list. On my pages for Africa, I have the cryptid
Mokele-mbembe and others which as far as I know fits under the family of
Bantu languages spoken by the Baka pygmies of Cameroon and the Aka pygmies
of Congo. Not sure how to mark it up or if its possible to mark it up.

On my page I list my name as Scott T. Norman, my middle name is
Thomas, should I put an abbrev tag to spell it out once?

Are there people on this list or others who can help with checking pages to
make sure their accessible as possible? I have Lynx so I can test as text
document but don�t any way to test anything else out, except having the
computer read the page out loud. Are there places that have equipment to
test out different accessibilities.

Thanks,

Scott
Fullerton, CA.

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