New theme for accessibility

Hi Steve,

Thanks for sharing that.

I think it's the first Drupal theme I have come across with access keys..(i.e. pressing ALT + SHIFT + 1, using firefox, is the same as clicking on HOME) and fine tuned for accessibility.

edited: quick question. Do you know how to add access keys to the flash audio players that come with the audio.module or if it's possible?

cheers

dub

Not to purposely be a wet blanket or anything, but... anything that is built "with accessibility in mind"... um...

The whole thing is built using tables... why would you do that? That's the first thing NOT to do when building accessible websites.

After having a look at the Equilibrium site, here are some thoughts:

1. You really should avoid using tables for layout. Proper separation of presentation and content would remove the need for the "linear layout" option.
2. The use of acccess keys is considered a deprecated technique. They often collide with browser, screen reader and operating system shortcuts and usually add very little benefit for the user. Screen reader users often prefer to use screen reader shortcuts to cycle through a list of the links on the site instead of using access keys.
3. HTML validation fails with 93 errors. Not strictly an accessiblity problem, but it certainly doesn't help.
4. The use of alt text is a bit spotty on the Equilibrium site. Testing with Fangs (or a real screen reader) will help you iron out issues.

I agree with the guys above I'm afraid, I think you have missed some fundermental things in this theme, looking at your site your logo has a null alt text while the bullet point things have an alt text of signpost (??), things get worse from there :-(

On the whole access key thing the following link shows a lookup table of reserved keystroke combos which should clearly highlight for you the evil that are access keys :-) http://www.wats.ca/show.php?contentid=43

I do like your styleswitcher and was happy not to see purley a font resize feature, the high contrast option is a good addition.

Nice idea, but lets start by addressing the points raised above as this is not what I would describe as accessibile by any stretch of the imagination, sorry if that sounds harsh.

Hi again Steve,

some great, constructive feedback there to consider.

I'm not an expert in the tables V div debate, so I'll bow to the experts on that one, but, the great thing about Drupal is that it allows people to not only give some constructive feedback, it allows them to submit patchesand improvements.

hopefully some of the suggestions made will follow through as patches to the theme.

Drupal needs more themes, so thanks again for taking the time to share it on Drupal.org and I'm looking forward to seeing how this develops.

Dub

I will be looking at these and responding in more detail in a while. I'm not completely surprised by most of the comments apart from the access keys one (I used a UK government recommendation). So it's surprising to find out that they are evil (is this part of President Bush's "Access of Evil"?) - I will certainly look into that one.

Steve