(Woo! “thought through thoroughly” — how do you like that construction?)

Ian

I tested my own site with this and found that it was warned or failed for the same reasons yours was. What is wrong with your main navigation being preceded by your ? I know it’s nice to give each menu a title but I think it’s pretty clear that a menu consisting of Home, About Me, Galleries etc. is the main navigation and as such doesn’t really require a title. Pretty much all of my other navigation is preceded by a heading.

I think the tool is a good one, but it MUST be accompanied by a human test to weed out the crap results.

Dan

Thanks, Patrick!

The fact is, I think that access keys shouldn’t be defined by any site. Even disregarding any specific country’s recommendations, the sheer existence of access key assignments can cause more problems than it realistically solves.

I think that’s the point I was trying to make as well! Which is why it is unhelpful for the accessibility test to recommend using accesskeys and to recommend which ones to use.

Sorry, but I don’t buy that. If we were looking at the difference between Section 508 and the DDA as regards physical buildings, sure, you can have differences between the guidelines and requirements in different countries. But the internet doesn’t work like that.

True. But the law does. As much as it’s a valid argument that the internet can be and is accessed globally, guidance on accessibility not provided on a global basis — - each country offers its own rules and suggestions, bound in law or not.

I think it’s unreasonable to suggest to somebody that they should need to know every country’s accessibility guidelines — - and worse, need to choose from among them.

The fact is, I think that access keys shouldn’t be defined by any site. Even disregarding any specific country’s recommendations, the sheer existence of access key assignments can cause more problems than it realistically solves.

Allowing the user to define and set their own preferred access keys is the only system which allows users to ensure that the access keys they prefer are available and ensures that the access keys available will least interfere with the user’s other software.

I can’t support the idea of choosing any one country’s recommendations on any point; everything should be judged according to the developer’s well-considered best practices and against the audience for that web site.

The guidelines and laws are a valuable resource, but if I disagree that a particular recommendation appropriately addresses an accessibility problem, I’ll make some OTHER decision.

It doesn’t ultimately matter that we shouldn’t have differences between guidelines. We do. They are. We have to deal with it as best we can.

While I agree with you in principle, I should also point out that UK guidance simply doesn’t apply in this context, since it is a United States based system. This is, of course, one of the big problems with trying to apply systems globally!

Sorry, but I don’t buy that. If we were looking at the difference between Section 508 and the DDA as regards physical buildings, sure, you can have differences between the guidelines and requirements in different countries. But the internet doesn’t work like that.

If a computer user, who uses accesskeys and knows the system that works on the sites they use regularly (which will probably be based in their own country) then goes to a site based elsewhere, should they have to learn a new “language” of accesskeys? And how should I, as a web designer, know which of the comments the automated tester spits out are international and which are specific to one country (and which country?)?

That doesn’t just apply to, eg, someone going to a tourist information site in a foreign country. I read web design blogs from the UK, the USA and Scandinavia. It doesn’t matter to me where they are based, as far as I’m concerned, they’re on the internet, and they don’t have a country specific TLD. If access tools are going to work differently in each of them, I can’t sanction promoting them. Until we have internationally agreed standards for accesskeys, which don’t clash with browser commands in any existing browsers or assistive technology, they are no good at all, and any automated tester that encourages their use is being distinctly unhelpful in doing so.

Sorry, rant over!

Both types of testing have their own problems: people miss things, and computers can’t discern the finer details (discriminating between appropriate and inappropriate alt text, for example.)

The advantage to automated accessibility testing is that the computer won’t miss anything. If you have an error which the computer is capable of detecting, the computer will find it. It just requires a certain degree of human knowledge and decision making to differentiate between the actual accessibility problems picked up by the computer and those which are not.