Web Content Accesibility Guidelines
W3C Standard 6, Guideline 6 - Ensure that pages featuring new technologies transform gracefully.
Have you ever come to a webpage that has a different look or feel than the usual or normal site out there? What makes it different? Is it the colors? Or is it the design? Or is it how they made the whole page act as if it turned pages like a book? Colors and design changes have been around for a while and most "techier" pages are different because of how they implemented some form of newer technology. Flash, activeX controls, scripts, cookies, and other technologies that webpages use are all considered to be newer technologies and are limited from everyone's computers. Not everyone has cookies enabled or javascripts allowed; Not everyone allows activex controls allowed and some people are actually too trusting and then get themselves in spyware trouble, but that's another topic. The hard part is trying to make sure that those people who do not allow these items to run still have the ability to view and understand your site content.
In researching how our sites should "transforms" new technologies well, we find at least 5 points of interest that we need to pay attention to. The first three are Priority 1 items which must be done. The other two are Priority 2.
- 6.1 - Our first issue is if a person does not have a browser that supports the use of style sheets, we need to make sure our site is still readable. Good organization of content makes that possible. If we rely too much on position from the style sheets to make our content readable, we are not meeting this requirement.
- 6.2 - When developers use dynamic or changing content, they need to make sure they also have their dynamic content equivalents updated as well. Do not forget to change one and not the other.
- 6.3 - Scripts and applets are becoming more popular, but they are still not always turned on on everyones browsers. Developers need to make sure their sites are still usable if someone has their scripts turned off. And if the site is not usable, developers should provide a good alternative.
- 6.4 - I wrote this webpage on my palm treo. Ok, actually I would just like to view it on my handheld device. Sites should make sure their scripts and applets are not platform dependant. If someone wants to use an alternate device like a handheld, make sure that is still a possibility.
- 6.5 - Finally, when dynamic content is used, developers should make sure their dynamic content is accessible or at least provide some other way to understand what is being presented. If a movie or sound clip is played, either sub-titles or a script of some sort should be provided for an alternate way of viewing the content.
