At 17:21 10/01/2003 -0600, you wrote:

> >...Near as I can tell the ADA isn't enforceable on the web yet:
> >Court: Disability law doesn't apply to Web (November 06, 2002)
> >
>
>One more bullet... ADA contains an exemption for churches other
>religious organizations!!!! Check it out.

Let's not sling the baby out with the bathwater. While it may not be
possible for your site to be fully compliant with the latest
laws/requirements/best practice suggestions governing accessibility to
totally ignore this issue because, "it doesn't apply to me" seems to be a
little bizarre - after all if wheelchair users were unable to get into your
church building because of a steep flight of stairs and it was possible for
some accomodation to be made to enable their access would this not be
something you would be discussing facilitating - even if it was not law in
your part of the world or state that your building HAD to be accessible?

You get theorists on every list, they will always know better than you how
to build a web site but tend not to have any startling examples of their
own to show around (presumably this is because they spend so much time
learning the W3C specs they don't actually have time to actually write any
xhtml or css themselves). The problem with the approach of simply stating
the spec/guidelines for any particular issue is that these things don't
stand independent of all the other aspects of your site.

JavaScript is a good example of this - if JavaScript was the only way to
navigate your site then that would be a bad use of JavaScript as it would
make it inaccessible (not just to visually impaired users but those with js
turned off and to search engines who won't be able to spider your site),
however if the javascript menus degraded tosomething that still allowed
navigation in these cases then they are not 'bad', if you build your site
so you have one page that launches a load of pop-up windows and all the
content is within those windows then that is going to be problematic in
terms of accessibility, however a pop-up window used for content that can
be accessed another way - or used for a contact form where there is an
alternate means of making contact accessible without javascript is not
going to be a problem.

This is why there is no test for accessibility that works like the w3c
validator, an automated test for accessibility can only say 'you have
javascript, this could be a problem' and then you have to make that
decision as to whether it actually is a problem, if you are honest with
yourself, and perhaps use the viewer mentioned in a previous post to see if
you can get around your site then you should be able to make that decision
easily.

As to not having enough time to do this - yes it can be a big task to
retrofit an existing site but it is possible even in stages. I have an
non-profit client who I built a site for about 4 years ago, long before we
cared about this stuff and while version 4 browsers were the most recent
versions. They can't afford a huge rebuild so what I have been doing is,
whenever I need to do some work on the site anyway, tackling some part of
the problem - this is a 500+ page, static site but slowly it is becoming
more accessible and it isn't costing them or me any more than the regular
maintenance would.

Even if you have to draw a line under existing sites because of time
implications then having accessibility issues in mind while you are
building new sites can only be a good thing - you don't need to go
overboard to make a difference, so many of the points won't cause you any
extra time and you get a more accessible site at the end of the day.

Don't get put off by the theorists and hard-liners, if someone says
'javascript is evil' and you know that the case where you have used it does
not stop someone using your site then you don't have anything to worry
about - it's always worth bearing in mind the places in which it could be
problematic so that you don't accidentally block access to a large chunk of
your content because there is usually a simple way to prevent that from
happening.

This site: http://www.webaccessguides.org/accessguide/toc.htm has a good
approach to these issues, and isn't as confusing and technical as the w3c
specs. Just by reading through something like this you raise your own
awareness, and then you tend to find that you start to work in a way that
creates a more accessible site just because this info is in the back of
your mind. There may be some things listed that you feel you can't comply
with - but there will be plenty that you can without any real extra work
and I feel it is a shame if people feel that because they can't do
everything they put the blinkers on and do nothing.


Rachel Andrew

work: http://www.edgeofmyseat.com
play: http://www.rachelandrew.co.uk
WaSP Dreamweaver Task Force http://www.webstandards.org