Forum: Accessibility & Usability

It's hard for me to try and check how my websites look in older versions of Internet Explorer when the program I'm using keeps crashing. Is there any program that tests a website in IE that works right? Thanks.

Hello, I like to put some sort of validation on my contact forms, I have used recaptcha and a math question in the past with no problems. I am now building a site for which the client's service is helping people with literacy and learning difficulties. While its most likely its their carers that...

Hi, From a purely legal (in the UK) point of view, do I need my site to work with JS turned off? I have inherited a site that uses complex JS to make the content appear as well as use core functionality so the site is useless without JS but that to me would mean it isn't meeting the minimum...

I'm working on a project with a faceted search, and I'm confused about how to indicate the aria roles. In the high-res version, the site has facets (search refiners) on the left, and the results on the right. The structure of the facet region is roughly (questions inline): <aside...

I've just found an article that mentions reducing the base font-size for small screens. It reminded me of a niggling question that I've been meaning to raise here, namely: should font-size be increased, left the same, or reduced for small screens? I'm not a mobile developer and I don't have easy...

I'm pretty aware of what goes into making a normal site as usable and accessible as possible, but I have no idea about mobile sites. I've heard of using xhtml/standard html, because it's better than the mobile specific html. I'd really like to know of a good resource that shows common problems and...

Hello I have not seen this pattern yet so I don’t know how it should work. What I am going to do is to be able to select some text and then display its definition in a dictionary (in a lightbox). Yesterday I came up with this: http://ryrych.pl/null/cambridge/cambridge.html You can double...

What would you say is the most accessible CMS? Not so much in terms of its admin UI, but in terms of its output and theme customisation? I spent a frustrating week before Christmas customising a Drupal site that I've taken responsibility for, and it was no fun at all to get it heading in the...

In the last 17 years, I've seen it all. I truly have... and while particular issues like this one don't take the cake, it's definitely frustrating from a professional standpoint. This client says: "Can you swap the huge text portion of the home page to the bottom, and put in the current bottom...

Concerning: User Agent and Assistive Technology Support Notes: Is that still true or is it outdated information? I've seen implicit defined as both the label and input being contained in the same element but I always thought, as stated above, an implicit label surrounds the input like this...

I am designing my first Wordpress theme and I was wondering about how readable gray text on white background is. At the moment I'm using #555 text on #fff background. The only clear suggestions I've found were on w3.org site (the WCAG 2.0 guidelines). They state the following: and #555 on...

The following is a bookmarklet I just created to check alt attributes on a web page. Tested on Firefox 8.1. ...

Hi all I am developing a login form with multiple login options. The main two options people have is to login with either their email address, or by using their Member ID. I wish it was just an email only, but after discussing with the marketing and membership people for the organization, it...

Hello, We would like to implement WCAG 2.0 on our web site but the official guidelines are very long to read. The official ones are located at: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/ Is there a condensed, simplified version somewhere? I'm simply looking to know what the most common ones are, and what...

There is an article at snook.ca link] about off-screen positioning versus clip (something which I've not tried). I'm using off-screen absolute positioning, though slightly different to the example in that article, but I can't replicate the page jump problem that this writer mentions. I have tried...

don't know why I can't get this to work properly.. http://mayacove.com/dev/acc/tabindex.html I have set a tabindex for all links with JavaScript (jQuery, actually); for the radio buttons I have set tabindex to start at no. above no. of links.. for the links in the gray boxes, I need them...

I'm working on a site with a number of images, one after another. Each image has a caption in <p> tags. My problem is what to do about the alt text, which would essentially be the same as the caption. If I include it, then screen reader users are going to have to listen to the same text, or very...

Hello everyone, We are one multilingual website and would like to ask about intro page, where registration/login form placed. The question is about languages bar. We are going to support many languages 50+ and the question is: Should we show most popular languages all the time and the More...

Some interesting developments on use of tables for presentation at the W3 HTML working Group. The proposal for tables. The Objection Poll. The proposal against tables.

I mean, sure they've been there for a bit -- but really? Dark gray text on darker gray for the menu bar? px metric fonts on damned near everything including except the input box and search results? Giant bandwidth hogging and annoying as hell AJAX for nothing "as you type" crap (They must be loving...

Thought this was cool. Guy is using VO+Saffy and possibly some buttons would be different with JAWS+IE or something. Will Blind Users Be +1ing? Would be nice to hear how accessible the video chatting stuff is for the Deaf and other accessibility in general.

A tip to survey creators: Please display all the questions on one page: formulate the questions accordingly. It is very tiresome to answer 5 questions, click to proceed, 5 questions, click, 5, click... It does not make you want to finish the survey. Thoughts on this?

Hi everyone, Is there an easy way to test a website with IE7 without having to install virtual machines or stuff like that ?

US non-profit group sues CNN.com for uncaptioned online video. Contrast this with schools and universities, who often complain they don't have the funding to do captioning/transcripts. Of course, being sued doesn't mean they will be forced to add captions, or that they will pay any money...

I have an image that I'm having trouble coming up with alt text for. Any ideas would be appreciated. http://picpaste.com/image009-JLRWeRmY.png

Hi all Hoping for some advice, of either technical or the client management type... I'm working on a website redesign for a local government funded body - i.e. a public sector client who's website is used by general public, schools, business, councils, etc. They quite rightly want their...

where I work we have to do ADA-compliant big-time.. for lists, they're having me put sthg like <span class="hidden_text">Item one</span> in EACH <li> I tried doing <ol> but the screenreader does not read them as item one, item two, etc..

So many of my clients have this idea that it is critical to avoid page scroll. I try to reassure them that its OK for for content to fall bellow the fold as long as the main points and actions are at the top. Really what's the difference between hacking off a bunch of information vs risking it...

Since every thread started by someone asking for coding help with pop-ups ends up being hijacked by the anti-popup crowd I thought I'd give you all the opportunity to vent on this thread. The Usability forum seemed the apprpopriate place for the discussion. How ironic would it be if someone...

I'm trying to use an FAQ style method for initialing hiding then revealing answers to common questions. A similar example can be seen on: Support | Springpad under the section Common Questions. The problem is that when an item is revealed, by switching the elements style from "display:none"...

Hello, I am trying to design a website that has the word REP in it, but for some reason VoiceOver with Safari on Mac OSX keeps reading it as "Representative." It reads properly in NVDA, JAWS and VoiceOver for iOS, however. I looked at the Safari HTML reference page and it suggested:...

I'm curious to know something about how assistive software is most likely to handle known children of unknown HTML5 elements, like headings in an <hgroup>. Is a failure to understand the parent element likely to cause child elements to be ignored? Not that I want to start throwing HTML5 things...

A client wants darker text - I'm using black #000. Is there a way to darken it a little without going to Bold? Thanks

Hi -- recently, I've started to help maintain a website geared towards helping recently-arrived immigrants (ESL classes, social service referrals, etc.). The website is scattered with links that say 'click here' -- normally, I would remove those and try to incorporate links directly into the...

Jason Kiss has posted some results from his tests done on various screen readers on pages with the so-called "responsive data tables" (I guess "responsive" is the new "also works on mobiles and stuff" hype term... bleh). Anyway, this is pretty interesting! ...