CLF for the Internet - Accessibility

Guideline 1.1

Guidelines are not mandatory with respect to this policy but are provided to help institutions carry out government policy efficiently and effectively.

Best Practices

Browser Testing

Following these 6 steps should minimize the need for testing multiple platform / browser combinations.

1. Design to the W3C Priority 1 and 2 Checkpoints and CLF Standards.
2. Validate pages to HTML 4.01 Transitional as a minimum.
3. Choose colours from the 216 web-safe colours list.
4. Use style sheets.
5. Test pages in a browser with style sheets disabled.
6. When a client notifies you of an issue regarding access to content, then test against the specific issue and improve or solve it.

Guideline 1.2

Guidelines are not mandatory with respect to this policy but are provided to help institutions carry out government policy efficiently and effectively.

Best Practices

Media Attribute

CSS2 allows you to write different style sheets for different kinds of Web devices. These are known as media-specific style sheets.

e.g. @media screen { BODY { font-size: 16pt } H1 { font-size: 3em }

This works for style sheets that are media-specific. If an entire style sheet applies to one media type you can use the media attribute of the LINK element so browsers can find out what media types a style sheet applies to without downloading it.

e.g. Media attribute can define the following media options: (Please notice here sight, sound and touch output devices - this is why CSS2 is really great for ensuring access regardless of communication devices used by Canadians).

• Screen
• Print
• Aural (speech synthesizers)
• Braille (electronic braille readers)
• Embossed (braille printers)
• Handheld (small handheld devices with small screens and limited bandwidth; will not display graphics)
• Projection (transparencies; computers hooked up to projectors)
• TTY (text-based devices and other devices with fixed-pitch character grid)
• TV (television based presentations)
• All (all devices; will be ignored by browsers that don't support it)

Media can specify more than one output device. In this case: MEDIA="SCREEN, PRINT". This would signify that the style sheet could be applied to both screen and printouts. The aural style sheets are wonderful for speech synthesizers because they can provide, among many options, aural referencing. Aural referencing can be used to signify many things, such as links, headings, etc. It is important to provide page instruction to ensure that the online client understands what accessibility techniques the designer has provided and how to use the page or site.

Bugs relating to the attachment of style to pages

Media attribute bugs

Bug 1: Only screen supported
Only style sheets declared as media="screen" are used, those declared for 'print' or 'all' won't be read.

This means that you shouldn't declare media="all" if you want Netscape to read the style sheet.

Bug 2: Commas destroy
When the media attribute specifies a comma separated list of style sheets (e.g., media="screen, print") Netscape will ignore the style sheet.