W3C Accessible Discussion Forums

[Fionaq]

Has anyone come across any Discussion Forums that are W3C Accessible?

If so, would be good if I could get a link to one.

Thanks,
Fiona. :)

[kiwibrit]

Has anyone come across any Discussion Forums that are W3C Accessible?

If so, would be good if I could get a link to one.

Thanks,
Fiona. :)

I believe PunBB (http://forums.punbb.org/viewtopic.php?id=11664) is close - and that v 1.3 will be closer. I haven't started a forum myself, yet, but this is one I may consider.

Oh, and welcome to the forum :)

[Moldarin]

What about ppBB forums (http://www.phpbb.com/)?

I have not looked into it, but do they meet the W3C's WAI (http://www.w3.org/WAI/) spesifications?

[Robert Wellock]

At best all they can claim is A it's not so much whether most of them are accessible as if the code is valid. Few use valid markup by default so their accessibility cannot ever get that high by default.

[Fionaq]

That's great info. I did wonder about the mark up side of things. Do you know why most people don't use valid markup for forums - is it just easier to programme that way?

Fiona

[Robert Wellock]

Yes it usually easier for humans to make mistakes; usually it's because they either don't care about validation, or haven't the time (or inclination in some cases) to check their output against the strict markup grammar rules.

[kiwibrit]

That's great info. I did wonder about the mark up side of things. Do you know why most people don't use valid markup for forums - is it just easier to programme that way?

Fiona

Legacy programming, I suppose. It's harder to create something from scratch. I have been struggling to convert a relatively simple guestbook to valid markup - though I am a user not an original programmer. I guess forum coding must be a big job.

[Green-Beast]

You might want to take a look at this, it's a modifed phpBB. http://crazybat.ca/forums/start.php

Mike