Re: text fot acccessibility

----- Original Message -----
From: "Larry Coats" <thewolves(at)attbi.com>

> Hilma wrote:
> > It's bad enough that every nav-bar link now has code for "pipes" in for
> > text-only browsers -
> >  <em style="display:none">||</em>

> I'm not completely sure what you're trying to do here.
I ran my page through the "bobby" validator and it complained that i hadn;t
separated my links with anything other than white space.
Then i looked at my page in Lynx, with no graphics - and realised that the
links are, indeed, not very well separated.
So, for the sake of text-only browsers, i use a double-pipe to separate nav
links, so it is clear that they are all separate (AND i can get the  Bobby
accessibility validation logo for my collection :-)

> italics. Not sure why you'd want italics, or even why you want the
> vertical bars.
I hadn't realised that it would give me the sloping pipes - i just used the
shortest in-line tag i could think of!
An error on my part....
But vertical bars- see above, and look at a page with a graphic nav bar in
Lynx!.
http://mysite.freeserve.com/bbm/hagar/HH/HHMain.htm

has the bars (that don;t come italic) - without, the links are not
well-spaced.


>But you could pick a tag such as <tt> that you're not
> using elsewhere and set that to display:none in your style sheet.
yup, got that (from Bert, too) - and a much better idea, will do.

> One problem here is that you're going against standards. Blue usually
> means an unvisited link. Purple usually means a visited link.
I know - it was just one of the 16 word-colours that i'm allowed to use in
CSS and quick to code - as i can change all my colours easily in the CSS!
But also - I find the default blue and purple really don;t look very nice in
my cream/green colour scheme - so i'm very tempted to move away from the
defaults (standards...) and have different colours more "in keeping" with my
page style, possibly in a different font,  and an underline on hover, and
hope that it is obviously a link.... but against standards, as you say.

But - in a block of text, the blue "jumps out" and is too obstrusive when it
clashes with the main text, and surely (I hope!) a diffferent colour should
tell the user that it is a link - especially with the hover causing it to be
underlined ;-)
I'm still wondering about this, but not too urgently, as it is so easy to
fix in CSS. (All my links use classes, "extLink" and "intLink" :-)
(I'm so glad i only started web design now, once CSS was stable :-) )

 > Then there's the colorblind problem.
That's why i will add stuff to the alt tag, for them -  fixed prefixes to
indicate whatever the colour indicates (and also for totally blind)
ummmm- can the alt text *be seen* on graphic browsers?
Some browsers show them as tool-tips on hover, but - i';m not sure which
ones.
Do my colour-blind users who choose a graphic browser have any access to the
alt text  ?
help, i hadn't thought of that problem!
And "yet-another-font" would *not* work.....


>
> As an alternative, you might create several small icons to display next
> to your links. One icon can mean "internal site", another can mean
> "external site", another can mean "on this page", another can mean
> "opens in new window". The alt text for these can say "internal site",
> "opens in new window", etc.

mmmm- yes, i like it - but :-)
If the link is within text, i don;t want anything that really "breaks to
flow" for a user reading the text;
just something different enough for him to realise it is a link, but not
jarring enough to interrupt the flow of text and reading.
So the little images may have the same problem as the default blue/purple of
coloured links.
For a links page etc, this makes sense - but for links within text, i'm
frightened of putting *too much* in, to a indicate a link.
When  i read something, i find lots of colour changes / icons /fint changes
really annoying, and may give up reading if the page is cluttered with other
information.
Which i swhy i favour differnt colours only, that underline on hover, but
close to my page's colour-scheme.
And i'll have to change the font for colour-blindness,

Do you see what i'm trying to say, i'm not sure i expressed it very well?

thanks for your time in this - i hope the site looks good, but mainly, i'm
learning to code for accessibility etc. which is good :-)

hilma
-x-----

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