Archive for November, 2008
WordPress Accessibility
I have been working in the evenings to make my WordPress blog accessible. I am testing with the Firefox Web Development Tool plug-in. This is not trivial. The templage that I started with was not accessible. I tried some of the acceible templates and found them either not to be accessible or not very attractive. I also wanted to maintain a look and feel with the rest of my web site.
Using the FAE rule set, I am close. Using the beta rule set, I am quite a ways from becoming accessible. My appologies to anyone using my blog. I will keep at it. I think it would have been easier to start from scratch. Here are my challenges for the remaining FAE rule set. I hope to have the blog accessible by December 1, 2008. Hang in there with me!
FAE Rule Set Violation
Designing Forms
Field and button layout locations are important for the visually impaired. Zooming makes keeping information in context difficult. Remember:
- Avoid horizontal white space between labels and entry fields. Minimize the user’s movement with the mouse when filling out forms. Keeping fields with labels is difficult when in zoom mode.
- Place the buttons vertically right below the last input field. Don’t make the user search way over to the left or right to find the input buttons.
- Make the buttons lage and high contrast. Help the user know what the buttons are used for and where the buttons are located.
- Avoid multiple column input if possible. Keep your forms in a clear vertical trajectory. I have actually been in zoom mode and skipped the second column because I did not know it existed.
- Keep your forms to one page if at all possible. If you need more than one page, use a “continue” button and take them to a new page. It is easier to go to the next page via a button than it is by scrolling the web page.
- Number your input fields and tell them on each page exactly where they are. e.g. “Entry fields 1 – 12 of 23, page 1 of 2″. This helps tremendously.
- Give immediate feedback on each page. Place a high ontrast message by the field and ask them for what is needed.
These design tips improve usability for everyone, not just the visually impaired.
IDEAS 2008
On November 14, I attended the IDEAS 2008 conference in Arlington, VA hosted by the GSA. The conference was well attended by government Section 508 coordinators and I was able to network with quite a few of the Computer & Electronics Accommodation Program (CAP) coordinators. The information I received on government buying procedures, Section 508 tools and web site testing was well worth the expense and time spent. Some things I learned:
- Section 508 is an unfunded Federal government mandate. Up until six months ago the mandate was not well received or taken seriously by most agencies. Section 508 is beginning to gain traction.
- If you have products and services you want to sell to the Federal government, you should be listed in GSA Schedule 70, Buy Accessible Wizard and file a Volunteer Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) form.
- Documents should be Section 508 compatible. This is as important as web pages.
- Closed captioning is required and more tools are needed in this area.
- CAP coordinators are a great help for impaired employees. They have budget for their clients and can make recommendations.
- It is not clear what the buying process or packaging strategy for product providers to the Federal government.
- The Federal government is committed to Section 508 at the implementation level. It is not clear at the Agency CFO level what the commitment is. (This was a main topic of discussion in the show floor.)
Relative Fonts
I have not posted in a while. I have been very busy getting my web site (www.learningaccessibility.com) to be accessible. I have done so and I feel good about that. One thing I noticed; not only are relative fonts easy to implement, but they do not behave as expected. If your user wants to use web pages with relative fonts, they should not change the absolute default font-size preferences for their browser. I did so for Safari. I saw strange results on Safari that did not match Firefox. I couldn’t imagine why the text on Safari was so large and why my page was so distorted. Visually impaired people use all the tools in their tool bag and the mix can be interesting. The result is that relative fonts do not mix well with altered absolute default browser preferences.
At first I was grumbling about relative fonts. I spent wasted time debugging the unwanted results. If you use relative fonts you should:
- Let your users know not to use multiple zoom methods that do not mix well.
- Make sure all of your fonts are relative. Don’t mix relative with absolute font-sizes on your web pages.
- Do not use font-sizes over 200%. This starts to distort the page.
- Use 85% to 100% for regular text font-sizes in order to avoid page distortion.
- Use the Web Development Tool on Firefox to find all of your font-size settings.
- Test your web pages on Firefox, IE and Safari to determine if you obtain the expected results.
- Test your web pages with browser text zoom up to 4:1 ratio. Your page should not be distorted within this range.
- Use relative div and table sizes as well. This will help when pages are manually resized with relative fonts.