Comments on: Search Engine Optimization and Accessibility

By: João Craveiro

João Craveiro — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 18:31:42 +0000

«Hey, nowhere did I say that “accessibility equals the alt attribute”!»

I wasn’t refering to you. It is, though, very common among, for instance, public sector websites, to see that the only accesibility feature — despite the so-called “accessibility shield” — is the presence of alt attributes “by all means necessary” (even if that means having 4 or 5 presentational images — i.e., otherwise useless — as 4 or 5 img elements with the alt attribute set to “*”).

As for WordPress, I beat that: replying comments from a Siemens M55

By: Dehumanizer

Dehumanizer — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 08:33:07 +0000

Hey, nowhere did I say that “accessibility equals the alt attribute”! That’s just an example I gave.
What I said - and what the article said much better, though I added the “text browsers” thing - is that both search engine bots and users with disabilities “see” sites much like Lynx does, so it’s important that the site is not only readable, but - as João correctly mentions - usable in it.

WordPress tends to be good in this respect, unless you use (or create) a very weird theme. In the past, I’ve posted in my blogs with my N-Gage (Opera 6.20) and my 6630 (both Opera 8.0 and the default Nokia browser).

By: andr3

andr3 — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 23:57:52 +0000

Yes, i’m with Joao on this one. Alt attribute isn’t enough to make a website accessible. One thing i do need to mention is that some screenreaders actually use IE engine, therefore support javascript and read the finished page. This issue came up on a post i read a while ago, but i can’t seem to remember where. I’ll search my archives back home and try to comment back with a link.

You can use Javascript without compromising your site’s accessibility and improving its aesthetics.
Using Javascript Mike Davidson and Mark Wuben have put together a very handy and accessible technique to replace text headers (h1~h6) with fancy flash movie clips with whatever font you’d like — no need for the user to install any font file. sIFR is the name, and it’s nothing new. 3.0 is in the works. It’s a very nice way to have both the fancy fonts for headings and keep your document accessible (if javascript turned off).
This is all done after-loading, so if JS is turned off, nothing will get replaced. Pretty good fallback.

More at http://www.mikeindustries.com/sifr/

Gothic, i’m getting an http error 500 accessing that with lynx. Also i see tables for layout, that can’t be good for a text-based browser.

By: Gothic

Gothic — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 19:14:35 +0000

Hi! try this one with lynx or links… http://www.hdtondela.min-saude.pt/xyz/, I’m codinging/designing it…

By: João Craveiro

João Craveiro — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 18:17:08 +0000

Well, in my opinion, accessibility is a lot more than that. For one, it’s not only allowing blind people to be read WHAT we can read, but also reading IN THE SAME WAY we can read — and that can be achieved.

Imagine an online newspaper, whose news’ titles were all images (as in: img elements) with the alt attribute correctly set. Is it accessible? Not quite. Sure, a blind person will be able to hear the titles, even though they’re images, but imagine that person is trying to find if the newspaper has already posted a certain article (e.g., a football match fixture); that person will have to read ALL the titles and excerpts, with the possibility of reaching the end and just saying “bah, it’s not here!” On the other hand, a sighted user would just take a 3 seconds long run on his mouse scroll wheel, just looking for a certain title. A bit unfair, uh? If headings (h1~h6 HTML elements) are used instead, the blind user can browse the page in “headings-only mode” (JAWS has it), thus emulating the sighted users’ “just look at the titles” attitude.

Just my 2¢ on why the alt attribute can be overrated to the point of mistaking some people into the thought that it’s the cornerstone of accessibility.