Re: Site critique requested (mostly accessibility issues, but anything else welcome)

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005, Fin Fahey wrote:

> I respect this group a lot, because reading it has suggested a lot of great
> ideas on improving site accessibility and usability. So I'm wondering what you
> might think of:
>
> http://www.culpeper.org.uk/

These are my immediate reactions.

It puts Mozilla (for example) into quirks mode, which I wouldn't rate
as good practice.

It refuses to fit into the not-unreasonable viewport that I gave it,
forcing left/right scrolling, something which readers report to be
very irksome. Should be designed more flexibly, IMHO.

Without looking too closely, I have the impression that it doesn't
believe my choice of default text size, and is trying to force some
smaller text size for body text, that I haven't chosen. It
exacerbates this by changing from my chosen sans font to its choice of
serif font. Unless I use Mozilla's option to force a minimum font
size, I can't read some important parts of the page.

An accessibility checker warns about two links which are not separated
by non-link material (a point that we've been discussing on this group
very recently).

I don't understand the purpose of a text-only site. There are
differences between browsing situations, of which a text-mode display
is just one of many. A well-designed web page should IMHO be
adaptable enough to fit itself calmly into these variations without
bothering the reader with extra choices.

Your site implies that the text-only option is meant for accessibility
(for which I say this is a misunderstanding), and for printing. If
you're worried about excessive graphical content on printout, I'd
recommend doing the decorative graphics as CSS backgrounds rather than
as HTML. The reader then has the choice of not printing the
background (which is the usual browser default in my experience) or
printing it if they really want to. This is the same for /all/ web
pages, so they only have to learn one new trick for all sites. I
don't in general like tricks that are specific to one site, that
duplicate widely-available browser options, and don't help them in any
way with all the other sites that they may be visiting.

When the main site is viewed in text-only mode I see this, near the
end:

Culpeper community garden sign
An oasis for local people
Culpeper is largely maintained by volunteers
Culpeper is largely maintained by volunteers

I'd say this needs a bit of detailed attention to its display in text
mode, after which the text-only option is superfluous. And it sets a
poor example to others: the WAI says something along the lines of
"only resort to providing a text-only equivalent if all other measures
have failed": I don't see any justification here for concluding that
all else have failed.

With the navigation area being at the top, you'd be asked to provide
an inconspicuous "skip to content" link at the beginning - another
point that's been discussed very recently here.


The site looks to be well worth a bit of extra effort - basically I
liked it.

hope this helps
.