[Gllug] Perl Question - Spam Filter for NMS Form Mail

[Ryan Cartwright]

2009/2/9 Lesley Binks <lesleyb at pgcroft.net>:
> There is a move/discipline/method to have Javascript 'fail gracefully' and be
> unobtrusive meaning the site should function well without Javascript.
> I think it is in response to the disability discrimination legislation
> in the UK and the States.

Yes, If a site depends upon javascript for key functionality then it's
likely to be blocking potential visitors. This has always been the
case but the DDA brought an increased impetus for web designers to be
concerned with some of those users.

> I've yet to combine a graceful failure with a captcha but I feel sure it
> must be feasible to design to fail to the state of delivering an audio
> output as the captcha even if this is server-side processing and not
> client-side.

I would think the difficulty would be with providing a decent
alternative to the captcha images which would not be used by the bots.
Aural alternatives will exclude braille-interface users.

> I haven't used Javascript for site navigation for a very long while. I
> think that is something that has fallen out of favour over the last few
> years in the same way image maps have - precisely because of accessibility issues.

Image maps are fine if they have a good alternative. See here for a
good example of that: http://www.cafamily.org.uk/inyourarea . This is
generally the problem as I see it. Too many web designers are either
lazy ( or under pressure from their bosses ) to spend enough time
creating proper alternatives. Thus we end up with IE only sites, sites
that render terribly slowly on dial-up and sites with minimal-but-poor
accessibility. It's endemic of a "works on my machine" design process
and it's as old as the hills.

Of course there's a valid argument which says that if including
visually-impaired users should not exclude others who may not even
bother with a visually uninspiring website. Add to that the fact that
the world does not split into visually-impaired and the "the rest".
I'm colour blind and certain colour combinations have been known to
make me pass out, others can render text completely invisible. I don't
use a screen reader and have otherwise good vision. I would generally
view the same site as "the rest" but on some sites I just can't see
anything or the colours make me physically sick.

The trick - as ever - is to serve all parties as best you can. It's
not easy but that's why it's called a trick. :o)

cheers
-- 
Ryan Cartwright
Equitas IT Solutions
http://www.equitasit.co.uk
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