Category Archives: Accessibility

Internet Apps Roadmap – Questions

The Roadmap for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) outlines the technologies to map controls, AJAX live regions, and events to accessibility APIs, including custom controls used for Rich Internet Applications. This post just draws attention to things I (and Iperhaps other people) could do with some further explanation on.

Image replacement and Voiceover

Freeverses top navigation with no style, showing a standard list. There was a question on the Voiceover list recently about links just being read out as ‘link’ on a particular site: freeverse. It turned out to be due to an image replacement technique.

Accessibility or Help links?

You see a lot of links on sites which are for "Accessibility", to provide both help for those with accessibility issues, and state what levels of accessibility the site is aiming for. However, I believe that this content should be split up between two different pages.

WYSIWYG editors spec – adding structural code

Interface example of a WYSIWYG editor. With a WYSIWYG interface, there has to be an area that appears as it will when published, which means to change bits within it, you need one or more toolbars. This is an exploration of what those toolbars should do.

Future of web accessibility

Trenton Moss wrote up his thoughts on the future of accessibility. The points in the main section of the article are good, but I don't think they provide sufficient basis for the predictions made. I could be reading too much into a brief article, as the problems highlighted are certainly problems now, but they are not without solutions in sight.

WYSIWYG editors spec – Importing CSS

Interface example of a WYSIWYG editor. The second building block of a modern WYSIWYG editor is how the styles are defined and added. Styles should be applied by class to standard HTML, but what kind of import methods would be best, and how would they surface in the interface?

Captions vs subtitles

In a short break from the editor series, and in the spirit of If you write it down you'll remember it, I'm going to risk a mauling by defining captions and sub-titles for video.

WYSIWYG editor spec – allowed HTML

Interface example of a WYSIWYG editor. Starting from the building blocks, what should an editor allow? Most of the browser based editors allow people to edit the source HTML. To make sure the code stays valid, the editor will have to filter what gets saved, so what HTML should it allow?

WYSIWYG editor spec – Overview

Interface example of a WYSIWYG editor. This is the overview that outlines the accessibility guidelines that affect a "What You See Is What You Get" editor (WYSIWYG) editor, and do a top-line evaluation of an editor so that you know what to look for. Setting the scene for a set of posts specifying accessible WYSIWYG editors.

Accessible WYSIWYG editors part 1 – The problem

Interface example of a JavaScript based editor. There is an elephant in the corner type of problem in the accessibilty world, that of WYSIWYG editors. In the first of a three part series, I outline this problem. The later posts will define what a solution would be, and see if it exists yet.