Critique Please

Brandons of mass destruction wrote:

In article <407ea143$0$41757$5fc3050 (AT) dreader2 (DOT) news.tiscali.nl>,
Els <els.aNOSPAM (AT) tiscali (DOT) nl> wrote:

Brandons of mass destruction wrote:

If only a small percentage of the population is using lynx, then
clearly it isn't a major concern, particularly when you have limited
resources.

I didn't know a website that is accessible by everyone
needed more resources than one that isn't.

More resources to build in that accessibility.

I don't understand. Resources like HTML/CSS tutorials?
That's the only thing I can come up with that you wouldn't
need (as much) for an inaccessible website, and would be
helpful to make an accessible one.

BTW, Lynx isn't what you want to write your pages for, it is
what you use to see if your pages are accessible in other
browsers, and to see if Google knows what to do with it.

--
Els

Sonhos vem. Sonhos vão. O resto é imperfeito.
- Renato Russo -

In article <407ea3c3$0$41757$5fc3050 (AT) dreader2 (DOT) news.tiscali.nl>,
Els <els.aNOSPAM (AT) tiscali (DOT) nl> wrote:

BTW, Lynx isn't what you want to write your pages for, it is
what you use to see if your pages are accessible in other
browsers, and to see if Google knows what to do with it.

I don't understand the last part about Google. Are you saying that
Google uses the information in ALT tages to index the site?

--
Quarkxpress sucks.

Els wrote:
........and to see if Google knows what to do with it.

Oh, I dunno, Els. The sysop's page might get google's highest ranking
for "calender_greydot.jpg"!

--
cheers, m

In message <junkie46-8E96EE.09380215042004 (AT) comcast (DOT) ash.giganews.com>,
Brandons of mass destruction <junkie46 (AT) comcast (DOT) net> writes

In article <DxFmA3PFFofAFwhM (AT) gododdin (DOT) demon.co.uk>,
jake <jake (AT) gododdin (DOT) demon.co.uk> wrote:

In message <junkie46-A54511.07373415042004 (AT) comcast (DOT) ash.giganews.com>,
Brandons of mass destruction <junkie46 (AT) comcast (DOT) net> writes
Here's a site our web designers are working on

http://216.55.165.48/~connect/

Thoughts?

One immediate thought: "alternative text"

http://www.gododdin.demon.co.uk/ng/CON1X.JPG (37k)

What happened? did it ever load or do you just have images turned off?

Images turned off.

As others will have told you, it's an indicator to what people not using
a standard graphical browser will experience. i.e. an unusable site

e.g.
Text-only browsers,
Dial-up users with the graphics-download turned off,
Screen readers,
talking browsers,
etc.

At first I thought it was just an oversight, but judging from your reply
to others it would seem not to be the case.

You can, of course, take the attitude that these users represent a small
section of the community and, as such, can be ignored. That's your
choice, of course.

However, you use the term 'our web designers' -- presumably they would
like to be thought of as 'professionals'?

So ..... get them to put the alternative text on each <img> tag ( a
'title' would be quite useful too).

They could even put a <!doctype> at the front of their HTML and see if
they can get their code to validate ;-)

regards.

--
Jake

m wrote:

Els wrote:
.......and to see if Google knows what to do with it.


Oh, I dunno, Els. The sysop's page might get google's highest ranking
for "calender_greydot.jpg"!

You don't think Google will think it's spamming and ignore
the page? :-)


--
Els

Sonhos vem. Sonhos vão. O resto é imperfeito.
- Renato Russo -

Els wrote:

m wrote:

Els wrote:
.......and to see if Google knows what to do with it.


Oh, I dunno, Els. The sysop's page might get google's highest ranking
for "calender_greydot.jpg"!

You don't think Google will think it's spamming and ignore
the page? :-)


They might, or they might file it under searchable images.

Here's what it'd look like:

Brandons of mass destruction wrote:

In article <407ea3c3$0$41757$5fc3050 (AT) dreader2 (DOT) news.tiscali.nl>,
Els <els.aNOSPAM (AT) tiscali (DOT) nl> wrote:

BTW, Lynx isn't what you want to write your pages for, it is
what you use to see if your pages are accessible in other
browsers, and to see if Google knows what to do with it.

I don't understand the last part about Google. Are you saying that
Google uses the information in ALT tages to index the site?

http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
--
Els

Sonhos vem. Sonhos vão. O resto é imperfeito.
- Renato Russo -

Brandons of mass destruction wrote:

heh. you sound like my wife.

.... and don't forget to put the trash out.

I meant Lynx, instead of Linux, but the point is still a good one, i
think. If only a small percentage of the population is using lynx,
then clearly it isn't a major concern, particularly when you have
limited resources.

It's not about Lynx. It's about have a quality information-rich
'skeleton' with accessible styling added on top, Lynx just being used
here as a tool to see passed the presentation down to the skeleton
underneath. The reason your site exists is to provide information for
the town, get the information right first and put the presentational
skin on later. This thread reminds me of
http://www.sean.co.uk/a/webdesign/ja...ssibility.shtm and this quote:

"Q. There are businesses that will seek to justify a return on
investment and there is a perception that engineering for accessibility
is expensive.
A. It is admittedly one more thing to do but I don't think it's very
expensive if you do it in the beginning. This is the advice we always
give for all usability activities: if you have a bad design you've got
to change it. That's expensive. If you don't have a design and you just
plan it to move in the right direction from the beginning, that planning
is not very expensive and doing it right versus doing it wrong is about
the same amount of work. It really is a matter of when do you do that
planning. Because accessibility has been very neglected, the average
case is where it's retrofitted so the average case is where they spent a
lot of money doing it wrong and now they're spending another bunch of
money correcting the mistakes they made. If you don't make the mistakes
in the first place, the expenses are dramatically lower. It is
nevertheless a good point."

Sooner or later that quote will bite you, especially for a community
website that can't be seen to be socially exclusive.

BTW: www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
"Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most
search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy
features such as Javascript, cookies, session ID's, frames, DHTML, or
Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then
search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site."
--
Andrew Urquhart
- Archive: www.google.com/groups?q=alt.html.critique
- Contact: www.andrewu.co.uk/contact/
- Employ me: Front/middle tier ASP developer with WAI & web standards

In article <407ea958$0$41750$5fc3050 (AT) dreader2 (DOT) news.tiscali.nl>,
Els <els.aNOSPAM (AT) tiscali (DOT) nl> wrote:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

a thousand thank-yous! This is the sort of info we're looking for so
that we can make the site better.

--
Quarkxpress sucks.

Brandons of mass destruction wrote:

Here's a site our web designers are working on

http://216.55.165.48/~connect/

Thoughts?

1. Unless everyone in your target audience has a broadband connection,
the total size of each page is way to large. At 56Kb I would start
looking for other coastal vacation spots...(which would be a shame
'cause Savannah is gorgeous).

2. Savannah proudly includes among its history:
"1963 First Garden for the Blind in the Southeast"
Could be that might attract blind people to one of the 8,000 available
hotel rooms. And those same people might eat at restaurants, go to
bars, seek out live music, etc...?

Resistance is futile, and not in your own best interest. Make it
accessible and smaller.

Chris Beall