Re: Another Interesting Story Regarding Accessability

On 5 Dec 2005, Chris Morris wrote:

"Norman L. DeForest" <af380 (AT) chebucto (DOT) ns.ca> writes:
There are a number of documents which can be downloaded for
subsequent use. They appear to be some sort of protected Word
document. Once downloaded, due to the protection you cannot use
the cursor to navigate around them.

You also can't use "Save As..." to save them as text because the only
thing saved is the heading before the newsletter. Someone took special
effort (password protecting the document) to ensure that it wasn't
accessible. Word does provide an option to unprotect the document but
that prompts you for the password used for the protection.

Odd...I downloaded the newsletters, ran catdoc, and got what I assume
to be a good quality conversion out in plain text. Possibly we're
looking at different files? (Or maybe catdoc just silently ignores the
protection) Which links did you follow to get them?

The two links on their "Newsletters page:
"Click here for the Spring 2005 Issue"
http://www.hertsblind.com/index_files/nl110
"Click here for the Summer 2005 Issue"
http://www.hertsblind.com/index_files/nl111

Strangely, even without extensions, Windows recognises the files as Word
documents and uses Word to open them when I double-click on them.

However, after reading your post, I used a right-click and the "Send To"
menu to send one of the files to a plain text editor and, indeed, the text
is available and readable once you get past most of the initial binary
garbage. I must check it out in more detail later to see what differences
there are (if any, other than layout) between what Word displays and what
the text editor displays.

Second example, big chunks of this type of junk is liberally sprinkled
throughout the web page. Is this some Microsoft Office scripting code or
something?

A standard MS Office web page includes this so that it can be read
back into Word to get (very close to) the original document. It's best
to view it as a Word document with an unusual format and mime-type
rather than a web page.

Recent MS Office (2003, at least) has an option to save web pages with
most of this junk stripped out (and then running tidy can potentially
produce a valid and reasonably hand-tunable web page, if the original
document was well structured), and Office 97 didn't include it in the
first place.

.... and if it hadn't been password protected.

--
Norman De Forest http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~af380/Profile.html
"> Is there anything Spamazon DOESN'T sell?
Clues. The market's too small to justify the effort."
-- Stuart Lamble in the scary devil monastery, Fri, 13 May 2005

"William Tasso" <SpamBlocked (AT) tbdata (DOT) com> wrote

...where the beer is warm, the kettle is always on and the regulars are
(mostly) touchy feely friendly.

Speak for yourself; I keep my hands to myself.

From a standing start, I'd suggest a competent site builder could make an
accessible copy (assumes content is present and correct) for approx £300 -
£600 (+ VAT if applicable) - vast funds?

Or perhaps I can plug www.it4communities.org.uk. There may well be a capable
developer with time on his hands itching to undertake such a project.

They have been set up with a graphical link rather than what I believe
is
the standard kind of link which screen readers can use.

That would be text.

lol

It is actually fairly difficult for a user with a screen reader to
Comment
on the site as the link to the Contact Us and Comments sections are not

accessible.

astonishing really

And typical.

By means of this e-mail I would hope that the HSB would receive a
greater
deal of lobbying in order to make their site accessible in a more
acceptable
time frame.


Can't help with the lobbying I'm afraid, but if serious detailed comment
from professional (and enthusiastic amateur) webmasters would assist then
please say so - include AWW in your response.

The OP might want to point them in the direction of the Disability
Discrimination Act (1995). They have a legal obligation to take reasonable
steps to make the site accessible to all.

Ironically, the RNIB are expected to be the first organisation to test the
latest DDA rules on accessablity - they are apparently pushing for some
cases of non-compliance to be brought before the courts...

Chris