Informing re: accessible website

[Allan Shaw]

Hi Cheryl,

The simplest and most often feature forgotten when using graphics on a web 
site is the use of the |"alt tag" which provides a text description for the 
graphic link and where I would start in order to address your concerns.

Allan At 11:34 7/23/04, you wrote:
>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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>Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
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Allan Shaw
24 - 850 Huntingwood Dr.
Toronto, Ontario
M1 T 2L9
(416) 754-0109

Email: adec at sympatico.ca
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