Accessibility

[darrentickle]

Hi

I wanted to start up a thread on the subject of accessibility. I wanted to know if anybody has been able to develop a site that fits in with all the requirements.

I have found this hard to achieve due to the over use of JavaScript but would like to hear other people views on this and if anybody has achieved this using Actinic.

Cheers

Darren

[cdicken]

Just to throw my two-penneth into the mix, when v7 came along we looked at the w3c conditions and did as much as we could to ensure that Actinic stores meet the basic requirements of an accessible store e.g. we highlighted required fields with an asterix '*' and ensured that all image buttons used alt text.

We were not able to do everything because of the templated nature of Actinic e.g. we could not add a tab index into the cells of the shopping cart table because the same code is used to build each row of the table.

I'd be interested to know if there is anything people feel that we as Actinic should be doing to make the stores more accessible.

[I-CC]

That could be a request that opens a massive can of worms hehehehe...

Obviously as much compliance with the new regs is what would be the best solution, but also from a software usage point of view, more accessibilty in terms of software usage is needed.

We have a few customers who are blind and run their own sites using Actinic and our hosting packages, with these guys and gals using screen readers which do not far too well when reading the Actinic application, so that might be an area that also needs looking at

[darrentickle]

Hi

Sorry I haven't been around for a while. I think the issue is with making the site completely using CSS, as this has been a big issue for me and in the end I just stopped going down that road. I know that you have created a new CSS theme so would be interested in look at that at some point.

My other main issue was with the navigation as in the end I had to hard code it so that I could use access keys and as you have pointed out being able to add the tab index to all form elements.

Also I have just noticed that this line

<Actinic:TEMPLATE type="begin" filename="C:\Program Files\Actinic v7\Sites\Site1\SiteHTML\SiteRoot_index.html"/>

is being added before my doc type so my code is invalided, why is Actinic doing this????

Have other people come up with site that met all of the RNIB standards???

Cheers

Darren

[pinbrook]

I'm working on upgrading a site at the mo, it is run by a blind person who uses SuperNova as his text reader.

I am using the guidelines from the RNIB site, but at present concentrating on the non shop pages. Once i've got those pages right I'll be looking at the best shopping basket to fulfill the need

[Nadeem]

Hi Darren

<Actinic:TEMPLATE type="begin" filename="C:\Program Files\Actinic v7\Sites\Site1\SiteHTML\SiteRoot_index.html"/>

is being added before my doc type so my code is invalided, why is Actinic doing this????

Because "COMPACT HTML/CGI" is not ticked. Simply go to "Design | Option | Miscellaneous" and tick "COMPACT HTML/CGI". This will strip out all comments from the templates.

Kind Regards

[darrentickle]

Hi Nadeem

Thanks for that. I thought I had to have that unticked for some unknown reason.

Cheers

Darren

[evanst58]

Accessibility

Just been to a conference on this today so thought I would add my three-pennies worth.

Accessibility is about much more than being able to change font sizes - e.g. issues such as forcing of image ALT tags, table linearisation, table summaries, link titles etc etc etc need to be borne in mind - that's without even starting on form elements.

The extensive use of nested tables for layout as opposed to CSS-P not only makes for inaccessible pages but makes incredibily bloated pages which is bad not only for download speed but slows us screen readers. Accessibility is not just about disabled access but making pages accessible and usable on different platforms such as screen readers, PDA's & mobile phone.

In my view, Actinic v7 will need alot of work doing to it if it is to generate accessible sites &/or developers will need to make extensive changes to templates to get any site even close.

I think this is an area that needs to be looked at with some urgency - as an interim step, perhaps a few simple CSS-P templates could be a start with simplified embedded, nested template elements. In addition to this, the ability to add ALT tags to image fields and link summaries would be useful.

Finally, I would make the observation that Actinic are not alone in having this problem - other software vendors suffer too but looking at what some CMS vendors have been doing for some years now would be useful.

[darrentickle]

Hi

I think that you can make your site a lot more meet a lot of the Accessibility with Actinic so long as you put in the work. I have most of my site using CS-P the only exception to this is within the forms area. I have also been able to add access keys and tab index to all form data, this did take some work.

As to the alt text, all of the product image does have some form of alt text against them, and if you wanted to add more details to this you could add your own custom properties to do this.

This is a area that needs more work put into, but I do feel Actinic are addressing this.

Cheers

Darren