/Access all areas/ jamesmills.co.uk
29/01/2007 | Filed under Develop > Access all areas
The Disability Discrimination Act places obligations for people to provide accessible services. Alastair Campbell tackles www.jamesmills.co.uk
The online presence of James Mill, a recent graduate of Teesside University, has a good separation of content and presentation using CSS and valid HTML. There are a few issues, however, which we’ve covered in previous articles: alternative texts, fixed font size and layout, and access keys that override browser functionality. One thing the site contains that we haven’t covered before is video clips from various sources, such as Google and YouTube.
Multimedia is one of the most difficult aspects of online content to make accessible. In practice, there are several levels of multimedia accessibility, and there are three things to get right before even considering the content.
The first is not to play anything automatically. This is considerate to those who use audiobased access, such as screen readers, as it would make interacting with the site very difficult.
The second basic aspect is to ensure that people know what they’re getting. The first two videos are fine. For example, the initial one is an image link with an alternative text of ‘Title screen for my skydive video’, although for top marks, this would be ‘Skydive Video (opens in new window), James Mills Tandem Skydive, Sunshine Coast, Queensland Australia’. Unfortunately, there’s no useful means of adding alternative text for the Google or YouTube videos. The best option at the moment would be to add a heading above each video to indicate the content.
A third basic aspect of multimedia accessibility is to ensure that the controls work with the keyboard. In this case, each of the Fl ash-based players worked with the keyboard, enabling the user to start and stop the videos. But unfortunately, the Fl ash controls aren’t labelled, so someone using a screen reader would have trouble knowing which control does what. Critically, James is using services to host and play some of the videos: they aren’t actually on his site and can’t be altered. Assuming that he needs to use the service, there’s little he can reasonably do to improve them.
Once you’ve moved beyond the basics, other multimedia accessibility criteria will vary depending on the content, and require that you host the videos. The principle to keep in mind is not to assume that the person can see or hear the video. For further information, see www.skillsforaccess.org.uk.
Comments
Richard Morton / 31/01/2007 / 13:56 / http://www.accessibleweb.eu/
One thing that I notice about James's site (and which is common to many other sites), is that while the navigation items change when hovered over with the mouse, they don't behave in the same way when the keyboard tab key is used instead. The items are then outlined instead of being underlined and in a not so obvious way.
This behaviour can be easily changed by the use of device independent event handlers, as ########### in the W3 Accessibilty Guidleines.
http://www.accessibleweb.eu/
James Mills / 28/02/2007 / 14:15 / http://www.jamesmills.co.uk
Once again thanks for covering my site in the mag. I posted a reply on my website a while ago and I just wanted to post a link from here to my comments too.
http://www.jamesmills.co.uk/blog.php?blog_id=22
Thanks, James
James Mills / 08/08/2007 / 16:42 / http://www.jamesmills.co.uk
Hi again! Just wanted to pop by and let you all know that my website has gone another re-design. Comments are more than welcome. Thanks, James Mills
