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alt.disability.issues |
> You could consider Dragon Naturally Speaking to help with the physical > Another thing is that Web Designers don't usually make full use of tools Community Living Chatham-Kent wrote: I personally do not think Flash is very good at all for accessibility.
> You could also consider using Macromedia Flash if possible. It overcomes
> many disability issues although it's not compatible with many "alternative
> devices" (mentioned below) that can connect to and read web pages. For
> instance a flash site could easily speak the name of a button (or have other
> sound cues) everytime the mouse passed over/near it and could read any
> pertinent information on each area of the site. It essentially becomes an
> interactive movie. You could even have areas of it cued to different kinds
> of disabilities so that you could select settings based on the users's needs.
For the most part it is used a a graphical medium, you also need to use
a mouse and it does not work (very well) with many screne readers.
> and let them go it alone from there. This kind of technology is in place at I had a look at that site, frankly, I left before it even had time to
> http://www.connectability.ca/connectability/pages/sitetour/index.html, a
> Community Living agency out of Toronto, Ontario helping people with an
> intellectual disability.
load. I'm only on a dial-up conection and did not want to waste time
waiting for some stupid looking Flash driven web movie to load!!.
If you really want to help anyone with a disability, then you should
just stick with plain old HTML, after all that is what it was created
for, to make documents accessable to anyone who required them.
I think your getting a bit a head of yourself here!.
> disabilities. Although I've not tested it using Internet Explorer, I
> believe it could be customized to access the internet without needing to
> touch a keyboard. Profiles are set up for the voice recognition of each
> user and you teach it as you go. This wouldn't work however with many of
> the technologies mentioned below because this is a software solution.
> (Although some devices are becoming more appropriately voice activated such
> as some of the newer cell phones able to call mom by saying "mom".)
> such as XHTML. New language standards are emerging in web design that will
> allow devices like Cell Phones or other tools to connect to and
> read/interact with the internet.
While I think XHTML has some great pertencial, it will not be very
functional in it's true form for a year or two yet.
The main reason why is because IE6 does not support XHTML yet, served
with it's proper mime type which is XML, (I think).
So all current documents still need to be served eather as
HTML4.01Strict, or as XHTML1.0Strict, served up to IE as HTML.
So that is why not many people use it.
Also, it's not really known as too how much of XHTML will be supported
in IE7.
> this case, the improvement for disabled users comes from the union of the That is a load of rubbish.
> website developer's code and the products that connect to it which so far
> isn't happening widescale. What we're left with are devices such as cell
> phones that try their best to interpret older websites but are really just
> scratching the surface. You can thank the flood of websites designed by
> Microsoft Frontpage and Macromedia Dreamweaver that make things simple for
> average joe designers, but limit applications such as this.
DW in recent versions has had very good support for XHTML, while FP has
never supported anything, a part from a few MS specific tags.
It's due to the reasons staited above as to why XHTML has not been and
is not very well supported, by many "Professional Web Designers".
--
Note,I only do web design as a hobby, but have been reading up on why
a lot of people in the job do not use XHTML.
Regards Chad. http://freewebdesign.cjb.cc