Cynthia report: WAI & Section 508 accesibility

[Ben Rogers]

I want my site to be accesible, so maybe I'm worrying too much, but I have some failures according to the Cynitha says report (my report: http://www.contentquality.com/mynewtester/cynthia.exe?rptmode=2&url1=http%3A//projep.t35.com/ )

I've gotten the following failures (only 2, just 1 of them happened a lot.
Rule: 10.5.1 - All Anchor elements not surrounding images cannot be directly adjacent.

* Failure - Anchor Element found at Line: 84, Column: 3 is directly adjacent to the Anchor element that precedes it.
* Failure - Anchor Element found at Line: 85, Column: 3 is directly adjacent to the Anchor element that precedes it.
* Failure - Anchor Element found at Line: 88, Column: 3 is directly adjacent to the Anchor element that precedes it.
* Failure - Anchor Element found at Line: 89, Column: 3 is directly adjacent to the Anchor element that precedes it.
* Failure - Anchor Element found at Line: 90, Column: 3 is directly adjacent to the Anchor element that precedes it.
* Failure - Anchor Element found at Line: 91, Column: 3 is directly adjacent to the Anchor element that precedes it.
* Failure - Anchor Element found at Line: 94, Column: 3 is directly adjacent to the Anchor element that precedes it.
* Failure - Anchor Element found at Line: 95, Column: 3 is directly adjacent to the Anchor element that precedes it.
* Failure - Anchor Element found at Line: 96, Column: 3 is directly adjacent to the Anchor element that precedes it.
* Failure - Anchor Element found at Line: 96, Column: 35 is directly adjacent to the Anchor element that precedes it.
* Failure - Anchor Element found at Line: 97, Column: 1 is directly adjacent to the Anchor element that precedes it.
* Failure - Anchor Element found at Line: 98, Column: 1 is directly adjacent to the Anchor element that precedes it.
* Failure - Anchor Element found at Line: 99, Column: 1 is directly adjacent to the Anchor element that precedes it.
* Failure - Anchor Element found at Line: 100, Column: 1 is directly adjacent to the Anchor element that precedes it.
* Failure - Anchor Element found at Line: 120, Column: 3 is directly adjacent to the Anchor element that precedes it.


Rule: 12.4.3 - Identify all SELECT elements that do not have an explicit LABEL association.

* Failure - SELECT Element at Line: 105, Column: 3 in FORM Element at Line: 102, Column:

I don't even know what I did wrong or how to fix it. Can anyone help me?

[IncaWarrior]

stick spaces between </a> and <a href="

at least i think that's it

[Ben Rogers]

You're saying a line break and two tabs isn't enough?

[IncaWarrior]

no, you need a space

[DaveSW]

If it's a list of links then maybe it should be marked up as a list.

http://www.accessify.com/tools-and-wizards/list-o-matic/list-o-matic.asp

[Robert Wellock]

You site wasn't working so I hazard a guess you have adjacent links without a physical character like a pipe | blank space does not count as space.

Anyway why rely on a stupid robot for accessibility testing when a Guru like myself can tell you what you have done wrong.

[shimon]

yeah, i do remember reading a recommendation that we separate links by something other than whitespace, i guess that's what would be at play here, since obviously tabs and newlines also count as whitespace

[Ben Rogers]

Rob - I didn't want to bother the guru, but if you want to help me out, I'm not stopping you. And my site wasn't working? Damn T35 must've gone down again, it's barely ever up anymore :mad:

Alright, I added and tamed the lists, (I dynamically generate links based on existence, so that was easy, i just had to add markup to every <h3> and once to the <a> tags, then for the ?id and ?0 pages, which are "special").

Now, I see there are warnings for me to add accesskey & tabindex attributes to my pages... I may or may not do that, it'd be a PHP task though, and I haven't tried yet so it can wait.

Now how do I make the forms accesible? Also, is are tabindex and acceskey really neccesarry?

[Sam]

you might want to avoid dynamically generating access keys. It can lead to a usability issue, especially for those who frequtent your site, if your access keys change frequently

[Ben Rogers]

If I can't dynamically generate them, they're not getting made, it's just the way it's set up, unless I want to go thru each and every file I have, which would be a pain.

Well, acceskeys and tabindex's aside for the moment, what about labeling the form? How, so I can at least pass. I don't use label so...

[Sam]

if they are numbered and dynamically generated it might work, but it kind of depends on how frequently they change... CSS zengarden just uses a-h as their access keys on the dynamically generated stuff...

[Sam]

as to the label, it would just you'll need to add an id to your select, then just use <label for="theidyouchoose">blah</label>

[Ben Rogers]

Where do I put the label element? I put it within the form, but that's not changing anything on the Cynthia report so i assume i messed up.

[Sam]

Everything passes...

[Ben Rogers]

Now it does :-D It must've cached and FF was being messed and didn't replace when I refreshed. Much thanks all.

Now, to Rob Wellock, since you say you're a accesibility guru: Do you think my site is accesible, and I can put up the W3C's logo for it (I know there is one, I just forget where it is.)

And one last thing: can acceskeys be a combination, like "g1" or something? I'm thinking of making the script have g# for games w# for website stuffs, o# for other, and s# for scs, and having the numbers gotten with the ++. It'd be easy to do, if it worked... then I'd put it in the title, and also have ithave a tabindex that just works with ++ as well..

[Paul Jr]

Originally posted by omega
And one last thing: can acceskeys be a combination, like "g1" or something?
No. Access keys can only be a single character.

[Ben Rogers]

But then what if you have more than 36 links....?

[Paul Jr]

Then you should forget about access keys. Though accessibility validators are nice for catching the big stuff, it's just a machine. I would ask Robert and see what he thinks about it.

[Ben Rogers]

Alright, I just like the nice validity ;).

OK, Rob- could you tell me if my website's accesible, or does it still need work, and if so what on, considering that it's geared toward people who are fluent in English, as I know no other language? :)

[Robert Wellock]

I am now back from my internet leave; so now you not talking to thin air again... essentially you shouldn't need more than 7 or so access keys preferably numbers since most other keys are taken up by various programs.

I won't test for 508 is it not internationally recognized outside of the US it also depends upon what you classify as accessible. It might also help if you marked up WTF as an abbreviation it's not a common word. Also revamping is not an acronym, why not markup the quote as a quote instead of a span.

Your purple links on the black footer e.g. 'Valid Code?' are not exactly that highly contrasted either, also why indent the first line of each paragraph its is an outmoded method that died when computers took over from typewriters.

You also seem to be lacking the <label> element for your Guestbook; there I've listed some changes you can make to improve the site accessibility wise, forget robots they are stupid. Also didn't notice a shrine to the Dark God of XHTML, which was rather worrying you are not piously-aligned.

[Ben Rogers]

Ah. Then I guess I'm not going to use acceskeys...

Alright.. then what tag do I use to get the same effect to explain what revamping means? I wasn't aware a tag <quote> existed. I'll have to change that then, I guess.

The purple links.. that's asthetic, and something I don't feel like fixing right now... but I knew about that for a while I just have to move some CSS code around I think. And text indents are outmoded? I don't know about you, but they make things look like actual paragraphs to me... they're part of paragraphs as I was taught in English.

Label element missing, eh? Damn Pyro... I got the form and script from his site I promise :p!! But, even though labels seem pointless to me, I'll add them..

And exactly what would I put in this XHTML shrine? Anyways, how can you be aligned to being religious?

[Robert Wellock]

Why add labels visit: http://www.xhtmlcoder.com/worthvalley/ and find my contact form and click upon the labels and you should notice the input boxes gain focus; it also helps assistive technology with associating the text with the input box.

As for 'revamping' it is a fairly common word albeit if you visited: http://www.xhtmlcoder.com/worthvalley/wvyfc6.php you would notice that 'Green Wellies' is a definition of a term as thus is marked up as <dfn title="">x</dfn> for revamping you would just add the title attribute to the <span> element.

Written English is different; remove those pointless indents they only confuse various users that is why we now use white space between paragraphs in the IT world.

I don't know what you would sacrifice at the XHTML Shrine that up to you, but obviously it would be a link upon your website with a paragraph telling how you sold your soul or something of that ilk.

Actually you can be aligned if you are religious you can be chaotically-aligned, neutrally-aligned or piously-aligned depending upon what deity you believe in or not.

Obviously I suppose you have never heard of Zorkmids of NetHack before; Web Accessibility is a Succubus. :p

[Ben Rogers]

Well, sorry, but I couldn't find the contact form you were referring to.

I did put in the label attributes for the guestbook and redid the labels for the contact form.

I also added the definition tag- I figured it's more semantically correct (WU?) than a span with a title attribute- it is a definition, after all.

I'm still iffy about your definition of pious, but I'll let it slide :p As for the Dark God of XHTML... no comment. Really... that's actually just creepy. ;)