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DEMOS Project

Online Materials for Staff Disability Awareness
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: DEMOS Techniques

Accessibility techniques used:
Priority 3 Checkpoints

Abbreviations / acronyms

WAI Guideline 4: Clarify natural language usage.

Checkpoint: Specify the expansion of each abbreviation or acronym in a document where it first occurs. [WAI 4.2]

This point is discussed in the DEMOS Accessibility Guide:

The <acronym title=""> and <abbr title=""> tag are used extensively on this site.

Example:

Hover your mouse pointer over the following acronym:

In a standard-compliant browser a tooltip should pop up displaying the content of the title attribute: 'Web Accessibility Initiative'

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Document language

WAI Guideline 4: Clarify natural language usage.

Checkpoint: Identify the primary natural language of a document. [WAI 4.3]

This point is discussed in the DEMOS Accessibility Guide:

The language is identified on this site in the HTML tag of each document:

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en-gb">

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Tab order

WAI Guideline 9: Design for device-independence.

Checkpoint: Create a logical tab order through links, form controls, and objects. [WAI 9.4]

This point is discussed in the DEMOS Accessibility Guide:

No tab order is specified because the default tab order is sufficient and works well in the browsers tested.

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Keyboard shortcuts

WAI Guideline 9: Design for device-independence.

Checkpoint: Provide keyboard shortcuts to important links (including those in client-side image maps), form controls, and groups of form controls. [WAI 9.5]

This point is discussed in the DEMOS Accessibility Guide:

The 'accesskey' attribute is used to give quick access to repetitive links. A list of access keys used on the DEMOS site can be found on the Help page.

There are only a few forms on this site and these are sufficiently accessible through the tab order.

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Links

WAI Guideline 10: Use interim solutions.

[Note: Guideline 10 might become obsolete in the future if user agents are designed to address these issues correctly.]

Checkpoint: Until user agents (including assistive technologies) render adjacent links distinctly, include non-link, printable characters (surrounded by spaces) between adjacent links. [WAI 10.5]

On this site links are separated from each other by a pipe | (as in the bottom navigation) or dots in front of each link (as in the right-hand 'Quick links' box). The top main navigation links are separated by an invisible (on specified background) dot. Graphics are not printable characters and are insufficient for separating links.

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Alternative versions of content

WAI Guideline 11: Use W3C technologies and guidelines.

Checkpoint: Provide information so that users may receive documents according to their preferences (e.g., language, content type, etc.) [WAI 11.3]

Alternative versions of the content are not needed on this site. Extensive user control is provided, the pages degrade gracefully, a text-only version is therefore not necessary. There are also no versions in other languages. Content type and language information are provided in the metatags and the HTML tag.

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Navigation & comprehension

WAI Guideline 13: Provide clear navigation mechanisms.

Checkpoint: Provide navigation bars to highlight and give access to the navigation mechanism. [WAI 13.5]

Navigation is discussed in the DEMOS Accessibility Guide:

Navigation to the main sections of the site is consistently available from the top and the bottom of each page. Additionally navigation within each section is provided by the 'Quick links' navigation box on the right hand side, while a so-called breadcrumb trail adds a chronological path, helping users to identify where they are and where they have come from.

Checkpoint: Group related links, identify the group (for user agents), and, until user agents do so, provide a way to bypass the group. [WAI 13.6]

Some of this is discussed in the DEMOS Accessibility Guide:

Related links are not specifically grouped, other than visually. But an invisible 'Skip navigation' is provided for users of screenreaders.

Checkpoint: If search functions are provided, enable different types of searches for different skill levels and preferences. [WAI 13.7]

Simple search can be accessed at the top of every page. Advanced search is also provided. (Update Sept. 2004: Search function removed after service added advertising.)

Checkpoint: Place distinguishing information at the beginning of headings, paragraphs, lists, etc. [WAI 13.8]

Some of this is discussed in the DEMOS Accessibility Guide:

"Front-loading", stating the topic of the paragraph in the first sentence, is not really used consciously on this site, except for the fact that all content of this site has been written with easy comprehension and scanability in mind.

Headers are, however, used to increase scanability of text and to give it a logical order.

Checkpoint: Provide information about document collections (i.e., documents comprising multiple pages.). [WAI 13.9]

Document collections, archives or grouping of document via the <link> element are currently not provided.

Checkpoint: Provide a means to skip over multi-line ASCII art. [WAI 13.10]

No ASCII art on this site.

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Supplementing text

WAI Guideline 14: Ensure that documents are clear and simple.

Checkpoint: Supplement text with graphic or auditory presentations where they will facilitate comprehension of the page. [WAI 14.2]

Many of the project reports contain graphs to supplement the text. This accessibility guide contains a number of screenshots to demonstrate different user experiences on this page.

There are currently no auditory presentations on this site, although some are in planning.

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Consistent style

WAI Guideline 14: Ensure that documents are clear and simple.

Checkpoint: Create a style of presentation that is consistent across pages. [WAI 14.3]

Consistency is discussed in the DEMOS Accessibility Guide:

A consistent style is used throughout the site in design, layout, presentation and navigation.

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Images maps

WAI Guideline 1: Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content.

If you use images and image maps...

Checkpoint: Until user agents render text equivalents for client-side image map links, provide redundant text links for each active region of a client-side image map. [WAI 1.5]

This point is discussed in the DEMOS Accessibility Guide:

No image maps used on this site.

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Tables

WAI Guideline 5: Create tables that transform gracefully.

If you use tables...

Checkpoint: Provide summaries for tables. [WAI 5.5]

This point is discussed in the DEMOS Accessibility Guide:

Summaries are provides for all tables.

Checkpoint: Provide abbreviations for header labels. [WAI 5.6]

In data tables abbreviation are provided for header labels.

Example:

This report contains a number of data tables. (On that page, right-click to view source).

WAI Guideline 10: Use interim solutions.

[Note: Guideline 10 might become obsolete in the future if user agents are designed to address these issues correctly.]

Checkpoint: Until user agents (including assistive technologies) render side-by-side text correctly, provide a linear text alternative (on the current page or some other) for all tables that lay out text in parallel, word-wrapped columns. [WAI 10.3]

It is impossible and expensive to test for all eventualities. The one table (header: logo, search, main navigation) used for layout has not caused any problems in the browsers and screenreaders used for testing, but it is possible that there is software, especially older screenreaders, that will have problems. Some display problems might also occur because of inconsistent support for the CSS techniques used for layout. I can only hope that users who encounter problems will notify me about it.

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Forms

WAI Guideline 10: Use interim solutions.

[Note: Guideline 10 might become obsolete in the future if user agents are designed to address these issues correctly.]

Checkpoint: Until user agents handle empty controls correctly, include default, place-holding characters in edit boxes and text areas. [WAI 10.4]

Default text was initially included in text boxes in some of the forms on this site. However, this was confusing for users and was therefore abandoned. Possibly a controversial decision.

A default text is however included in the search box at the top of every page.

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