accessibility-issues

accessibility issues

These are externally raised issues about accessibility with broadly varying degrees of merit. Thus some issues may be REJECTED for a number of obvious reasons (but still documented here in case they are re-raised), and others contain longer discussions. Some issues may be ACCEPTED and perhaps cause changes or improved explanations in the spec.

Submitted issues may (and probably will) be edited and rewritten for better terseness, clarity, calmness, rationality, and as neutral a point of view as possible. Write your issues well. — Tantek

Please add new issues to the top of the list. Please follow-up to resolved/rejected issues with new information rather than resubmitting such issues. Duplicate issue additions will be reverted.

Issues

hCalendar

hCalendar specific accessibility issues. These are separated from the hCalendar issues in general so that they are not lost among other non-accessibility related issues.

• open issue! 2007-01-20 raised by Andy Mabbett
  1. Where DTEND is a date, and not a date-time, it is required to be the day after the end of the event, thus: <abbr class="dtend" title="2007-04-30">29 April 2007</abbr>. However, "29 April 2007" is not an abbreviation of 2007-04-30; it is an abbreviation of 2007-04-29. The markup as shown is semantically incorrect and likely to cause problems for users and user-agents which read the title attribute, and not the text value, of the abbr element.

• open issue! 2006-12-11 raised by Andy Mabbett
  1. The image in hcalendar-brainstorming#Photos and other attachments has inappropriate alt text, being just the file mname. Andy Mabbett 15:23, 6 Mar 2007 (PST)

• open issue! 2008-05-21 raised by Charles Belov
  1. ISO dates are not conceptually friendly to non-technical persons creating a web page manually.
  2. An alternate encoding which I believe would be accessible would be as follows:

Monday, May 16, 2008, 2:31pm<abbr class="dtstart"
style="display:none" title="2008-05-16T14:31:00-0700"></abbr>

Charles Belov 13:35, 21 May 2008 (PDT)

abbr-design-pattern

• open issue! 2007-04-27 raised by JamesCraig, BruceLawson.
  1. Web Standards Project ATF article and discussion about why some instances of the abbr-design-pattern are bad for accessibility.'

• open issue! 2006-09-20 raised by Andy Mabbett in accessifyforum
  1. Use of 'abbr' in microformats

include-design-pattern

• open issue! 2007-04-28 raised by PatrickLauke
  1. although nominally empty, hyperlink includes still present in tab cycle of major browsers, proving to be a problem for keyboard users (including users of screen readers)
  2. JAWS 7.0 testing not conclusive to ascertain compatibility in other major screen readers.

Accessibility of this wiki

• open issue! 2006-11-26 raised by Andy Mabbett

• 1. Large blocks of italic text are inaccessible to many readers, including people with types of visual impairment, dyslexia, etc. [1], [2]. [3], [4], [5]

• open issue! 2006-12-11 raised by Andy Mabbett

• 1. Duplicating link text breaches WAI-WCAG 1 guideline 13.1 Clearly identify the target of each link and is unhelpful to users of assistive technologies and other agents, which provide links in a stand-alone, out-of-context list.

• open issue! 2008-01-14 raised by Andy Mabbett

• 1. Inappropriate alt text, using file name as default, on images conveying information (e.g. [6]). Can editors specify alt text?

• open issue! 2008-02-07 raised by Andy Mabbett

• 1. The use of "font-size:smaller" on superscript notes is an accessibility barrier. Superscript is already smaller than the user's default preferred text size, and such links present a too-small target for people with visual disabilities and/ or motor-coordination problems to hit, even if they can read them. The Joe Clarke article cited in support of this change is not applicable; it refers to default font size for a page, and does not excuse making text smaller than that default. Even at default text size, single-character links are often too small for such users to "hit".

Template

Consider using this format (copy and paste this to the end of the list to add your issues; replace ~~~ with an external link if preferred) to report issues or feedback, so that issues can show up in hAtom subscriptions of this issues page. If open issues lack this markup, please add it.

Please post one issue per entry, to make them easier to manage. Avoid combining multiple issues into single reports, as this can confuse or muddle feedback, and puts a burden of separating the discrete issues onto someone else who 1. may not have the time, and 2. may not understand the issue in the same way as the original reporter.

<div class="hentry">
{{OpenIssue}} 
<span class="entry-summary author vcard">
 <span class="published">2011-MM-DD</span> 
 raised by <span class="fn">~~~</span>
</span>
<div class="entry-content discussion issues">
* <strong class="entry-title">«Short title of issue»</strong>. «Description of Issue»
** Follow-up comment #1
** Follow-up comment #2
</div>
</div>

Resolved Issues

Issues that are resolved but may have outstanding to-do items.

• ...

Closed Issues

Resolved issues that have no further actions to take.

• 2006-10-06 raised by John Foliot in w3c-wai-ig

  1. What we don't need (IMHO) is a web where everything is simply a <div> with some extraneous Microformats style association added to it.

  • I'm not sure what the issue is here? the use of div elements is NOT an accessibility issue in itself, and microformats always advocate to use the most semantic element in the first place. The following email in that thread 2006-10-06 Frances Berriman answers the issue. brian 14:02, 13 Aug 2007 (UTC)

• 2006-11-26 raised by Andy Mabbett
  1. Using emboldening and italics to differentiate types on, e.g. the cheatsheet pages hcard-cheatsheet, is unhelpful to users of assistive technologies, text-only devices, etc. A number, letter or symbol should additionally be used. Andy Mabbett 14:33, 26 Nov 2006 (PST)
     • I think the emboldening is fine as it marks up the required properties. The italics are a bit of a problem but keep it simple at the moment. Additional characters can’t be used as they would break the class="property" template. Colours would be a way but are inaccessible to some users, so there is no real solution to that problem for now. Julian Stahnke 22:55, 26 Nov 2006 (GMT)
       • "I think the emboldening is fine" - how would you understand emboldening in a text-only browser like Lynx, or in an aural browser? Andy Mabbett 15:17, 26 Nov 2006 (PST)
         • Ups, I just assumed that it would use strong and em tags. Yeah, well, let’s think about it. Julian Stahnke 23:22, 26 Nov 2006 (GMT)
     • Of course, one could add that stuff after the class="property" thing. That might look a little cluttered though. I’ll consider that for the next revision/next cheat sheet I do. Julian Stahnke 22:57, 26 Nov 2006 (GMT)
       • All that's needed is:

* class="vcard" (1)

instead of:

* class="vcard"

Andy Mabbett 15:24, 26 Nov 2006 (PST)

• 1. • Now resolved. Thanks to all who helped. Andy Mabbett 10:30, 11 Dec 2006 (PST)

See Also

• accessibility
• assistive-technology
• microformats-issues