[Gllug] Barbican website - accessibility issues

Tue Nov 12 20:07:42 UTC 2002

From: CEvers at barbican.org.uk
To: gllug at linux.co.uk
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 14:49:52 -0000
Subject: [Gllug] Barbican website - accessibility issues
Reply-To: gllug at linux.co.uk

>On the second point of browser compatibility, as I mentioned in my
>original email, at the time the site was designed, Opera and the others
>were off the radar.  And much as I agree with the point made by Gary
>Heaton and Will Jessop that making the site compliant with W3C
>standards will make the site compatible with future developments in the
>browser industry, I do believe that an arts site has a duty to be
>visually interesting/aesthetically pleasing - would this be possible if
>we followed W3C standards to the letter? I'm not convinced.

The problem with the Barbican site has little, if anything, to do with
Opera, Mozilla or any other browser brand and more to do with the fact
that the site's navigation is built entirely in Javascript without a
text-based equivalent or <noscript> directive being provided.
Conseqently, anyone using a browser/device without Javascript
(Lynx/devices for the disabled) or who has Javascript disabled, will
either see nothing or a long heap of rollover images which should have
been cached. According to:

http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2002/October/javas.php

... 11% of users have Javascript disabled, for whatever reason.

>On the positive side I would argue that their (Microsoft) products have
>made IT affordable to many more individuals and organizations than
>would have been possible otherwise - I suspect you disagree with me on
>this!

Since the biggest selling-point for OSS alternatives has been
Microsofts's licencing fees, yes, I have to disagree. Here's what a
25-client office server will cost you:

The Microsoft Way
=================
Windows 2000 Server (25 clientS) ...... £ 1,450
Windows XP Pro x 25 ................... £ 5,775
Office XP Standard x 25 ............... £ 9,525

TOTAL COST OF M$ SOFTWARE ............. £16,750

The Open Source Way
===================
Linux Server (Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSe, Debian) ... £0.00
Linux Workstation x 25 ........................... £0.00
Open Office 1.0.1 x 25 ........................... £0.00

TOTAL COST OF OSS SOFTWARE ....................... £0.00

>So getting down to details, what concrete steps should the Barbican be
>taking to evolve its website in the broad direction you and I agree we
>should be taking?  I would like to invite 3 or 4 of you down to the
>Barbican for a chat about this (tea and biscuits on me) - how about
>Gary, Will and Linuxlover - I promise not to wear a 'Gates is God'
>t-shirt.

The navigation "Totem" is graphically elegant but it breaks without
Javascript and brings the whole site down with it. With styles and
scripted elements it's best to build your site's foundations without
them first and add them later as enhancements. If you're going to embed
a lot of text in images/buttons you need to make sure the 'alt' text is
going to function when scripting isn't enabled.

The site needs <noscipt> directives to deal with browsers which have
Javascript disabled. This can be wrapped around a <meta refresh ... as
follows:

<head>
<noscript>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=/text_alternative.html" />
</noscript>
</head>

As internet-enabled devices diversify it's hard to predict which will
have scripting capabilities or even which support the full range of
HTML4/XHTML1 tags. The trend within XHTML is towards modularisation of
web pages to enable devices with cut-down features to selectively access
the content. This can only be achieved if sites seperate content from
presentation. The problem is compounded when the content is tied to
scripting.

More over tea and biscuits :-)

Garry Heaton

>Best wishes, Chris Evers

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