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Re: proposing Section 508 compliance as requirement for 2.x

On 4/25/07, Chris Travers <..hidden..> wrote:

On 4/25/07, David Bandel <..hidden..> wrote:

<snip>
> With CSS removed,
> everything just lines up vertically.  This is how it's supposed to
> work, and where I am starting to go.  (And it has nothing to do with
> plone, btw.)

Great.   Just making sure that everyone is on the same page.  Seems
that we are :-)

Of course, I probably should have clarified-- nothing in the 1.2.x
codebase needs to be Section 508-compliant because it will all be
replaced by 2.0 and the code is sufficiently... unstructured.... to
make compliance a problem :-)

>
> As I rework the code, you should be able to use validate it at the
> xhtml validation site.  Yesterday, the login page didn't even
> validate.  Today, it does (with my changes).  I don't plan to change
> the overall layout, I personally like the menu on the left and work
> area on the right.  Without CSS, that will fall vertically with the
> menu first and the work area below.

Would it be better to reverse this?  I.e. since most of the work is
done in the work area, would it not be better to make that default to
the top?  Just a thought, and I am open to suggestions (it is not a
showstopper for any of my deployments, just trying to have a
discussion on the best way forward).


OK.  What we could try out is to have the work area above, and the
menu across the bottom.  With CSS, the work area would be a fixed
vertical size and scroll.  Without CSS, the work area would drop down
until it ran out.  For the majority of forms, this would not be a big
deal, but a long output could be more problematic for text browsers --
i.e., you might have a few pages to get through until you hit bottom
unless outputs had a limit option and a continue button.  But see also
Chris' suggestion about skip links.  Will have to take a look at that
site with a text browser.



Also, one more thing to consider-- currently we are putting in place
an infrastructure for UI templates.  Getting valid XHTML out of the
rest of the codebase, while certainly desirable (and patches would
almost certainly be accepted after validation), will be more difficult
than working on moving it all to templates in the 1.3-2.0 timeframe.


I was going to recommend pulling the xhtml out.  Right now it's all so
intertwined I'm working between working code and display code.  While
OK for one person, it makes splitting out work difficult.  Those of us
who can do Perl, SQL, _and_ xhtml probably can't do any as well as
those of us who do just one thing well (sounds like the UNIX
philosophy).



>
> I plan to ensure the changes I make work in all browsers, but I don't
> have all browsers available to test against (i.e., IE), so will need
> others to send me screenshots when something doesn't look good.
>
> As for 508 compliance -- this is a real bugger.  But if the code is
> valid xhtml (I expect to go from transitional and frameset to strict),
> this part (page display) should not be a big problem.

I don't actually think it will be too bad as long as we start now.  Of
course, you don't have to worry so much about it for the stuff not
moved into templates since that is going away.



Ciao,

David A. Bandel
--
Focus on the dream, not the competition.
           - Nemesis Air Racing Team motto