Table of Content:
- Testing in a text only browser
- Lynx for Windows users
- Using Lynx
- Testing in a screen reader
- IBM Home Page Reader
- Using Home Page Reader
- Macromedia.com ()
- The Register ()
- MSN ()
- IBM Home Page Reader
- Summary
Testing Accessible Web Sites
With Dreamweaver, you can check your mark-up using the built-in validator, or you can use the validators on the W3C site, because markup and CSS is either right, or it isn't. A web site can be technically accessible (that is, all the alt text is there etc) but still very difficult to use, so you need to test it. In this tutorial, Rachel looks at testing your sites with the free Lynx text-only browser, or a trial edition of a screen-reader and what to look for.
Rachel then demonstrates common errors that come to light at tetsing time, by looking at accessibility mistakes on big web sites such as Macromedia.com and The Register.
Rachel Andrew
Rachel Andrew is a trained dancer and singer, whose CV lists jobs as diverse as company choreographer for a physical theatre company to chargehand carpenter for “The Mousetrap” at St. Martin’s Theatre in London’s West End. After leaving the theatre when pregnant with her daughter, Rachel started to design sites mainly out of curiosity into how it worked. It didn’t take too long for her to figure out that her skills lay in development as opposed to design and these days she tends to leave the design to designers so she can concentrate on writing code, dismantling computers and installing Linux on anything that stays still long enough.
Rachel has worked in the industry as a webmaster, technical project manager and senior web developer but in September 2001 set up her own company ‘edgeofmyseat.com’, which provides complete web solutions and outsourced development services for design agencies and Internet start-ups who do not have in-house web developers.
As well as managing and doing much of the development on projects for edgofmyseat.com Rachel is a published author and worked as a co-author on the following titles for Glasshaus:
Dynamic Dreamweaver MX ISBN:1904151108
Fundmental Web Design and development Skills: ISBN:1904151175
Dreamweaver MX Design Projects: ISBN:1904151272
Rachel is also a member of the Web Standards Project serving on The Dreamweaver Task Force.
In her spare time Rachel studies for ‘fun’ with the Open University, does family and local history research and spends time with her 5 year old daughter and her other half, Drew McLellan.