Informing re: accessible website

[Marshall F. Scott]

Hi,
What aboutwww.w3c.org?  There is an accessibility link that covers general
accessibility rules and has tools for checking a web for accessibility
problems.
Marshall

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Cheryl Homiak" <chomiak at charter.net>
To: "speakup" <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Friday, July 23, 2004 9:34 AM
Subject: Informing re: accessible website


> I've been having a conversation with one of my grocery stores here in town
> that has a service for web ordering and delivery (actually the service
> includes this store plus two or three others in different towns). I
> couldn't shop with it at all in lynx the cat or links the chain but did,
> with great effort, make it through an order using freedombox, which means
> that eventually those using gnopernicus and/or orca probably would be able
> to do it with mozzilla. freedombox has a program called C-saw, whereby you
> can put labels on imaged links and then submit them to a repository so
> others on freedombox will see those when they go to the website instead of
> just "link" "link" "link" for a lot of the links. However, the submission
> key mapping for c-saw is alt+s, which the site uses to jump people to the
> recipe search box. I can, however, still use alt+l, which is used in c-saw
> to do the initial labeling, to look at the image url and link url.
> I talked to somebody involved in the grocery deliver department, though
> not a technical person. She seemed genuinely interested in how the website
> could be made accessible. I'm afraid I wasn't very good at explaining to
> her why, if they have a link with a graphic that does have the words for
> the link within the graphic, I don't even get the words displayed. when I
> explained to her that with C-saw I could see the name of the url and
> thereby often deduce what it was but couldn't use the C-saw program
> because they have alt=s (the key mapping used to do c-saw submissions)
> mapped to a recipe search box, she immediately offered to talk to their
> web design person about removing the alt+s keymapping from their site.
> I've frankly never had anybody be so responsive. she also wanted to know
> if I could point her to a website they could use as an example of how to
> do things accessibly. This is where my writing to this list comes in. Can
> anybody point me to a webpage to which I can point her for an example of
> how they can still do their graphics but make the site accessible for
> blind people? Also, is there a webpage that gives information they can
> read
> about how they could implement accessibility on their website with the
> least wear and tear possible. I don't have to be as concerned about
> javascript in freedombox, though I certainly am going to explain that this
> can be an added barrier. If anybody wants to try looking at the website
> with which I am dealing, it's http://www.sentryonthego.com
> You'll see that by looking at the url title at the bottom of your page
> when you are at each link, you can often get an idea what the link is but
> not always. And to enter the store they use some kind of button that even
> on  links the chain just gives you an ok at the bottom of the page and
> nothing happens when you try to use the link; you can get into the tour
> and the tips for shopping but that's it. In freedombox i can shop using
> the search box they have, but I haven't yet found the link that helps you
> browse the aisles as they describe so I don't know if I'm missing it or if
> there's some other reason I just can't get there. There are a whole lot of
> inaccessibility issues with this website but I don't want to overwhelm
> them by telling them to change a whole bunch of things at once. If they do
> go ahead and drop the alt+s mapping it would indicate to me that they are
> serious about accommodating blind customers. In that case, I'd like to
> give
> them the tools for educating themselves about what would help with their
> site and give them some space to see how far they take it. I think when
> somebody shows an eagerness to do what needs to be done to make a site
> accessible, we want to encourage that, and sometimes if we point out a
> whole list of things at once we can overwhelm people into feeling they
> can't do what is needed and so they may react by doing absolutely
> nothing. I think I may have a really receptive business here (they are
> also usually very helpful to blind shoppers who come into the store) and i
> would like to make the most of it.
> Thanks for any suggestions.
>
>
> -- 
> Cheryl
>
> "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
>
>
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