Today's theme is accessibility. Whilst I'm still impressed with the ease with which I can extend PostNuke's functionality by the simple addition of a module, I was less impressed, initially, with the apparent paucity of information and activity related to producing more accessible sites using the PostNuke toolkit. I've got a feeling that similar accessibility concerns may also apply to many other content management systems or weblog engines The same caveat as in previous articles applies, i.e. PostNuke is merely my 'base camp' from which I explore and that I'm not necessarily advocating this as the solution. If you want to know more read on! Let's start with a little experiment. Click on this hyperlink to 'css Zen Garden' where I want you to admire the beauty of the designs put before you as exemplars. When you've done admiring come back here.
I hope you all agree that the demonstration styles were very impressive.
Now, if you haven't already done so, do the same again and this time use your browser's 'View' menu and select the item which enables you to increase the text size (some browsers also offer the Ctrl + or Ctrl - keyboard shortcuts).
If you're an Internet Explorer user then you're probably out of luck. Why? Well, the designers back at 'css Zen Garden' have created style sheets with fixed font sizes and so IE will not allow you to scale your text. Users of the Mozilla browser appear to escape this fate. So if you want, or need, to read text at larger sizes and you're amongst the 80% of people who use IE then you either accept the default font size or nothing [Editor's note: see clarification in comments section].
What's this got to do with PostNuke? Similar to 'css Zen Garden' PostNuke has a really neat system whereby you can change 'themes' and thereby completely transform the identity of your site. Again, the problem is that the majority of these 'themes' are driven by style sheets incorporating fixed font sizes. Whilst the designers of most of these themes must have laboured for very protracted periods of time on their impressive works their design decisions break a key browser behaviour; a behaviour which is of particular importance to people with visual impairment or who just prefer larger text. So, put bluntly, the majority of PostNuke themes aren't shining examples of accessible design in action, currently.
Why is this problem apparently so intractable? Part of the answer lies in web page designers' belief that a good layout is only possible if the absolute size of all elements on the screen are known in advance. Elements which change size under user control may no longer be proportionate in relation to other elements on the page and so subverts the designer's intention and therefore, they argue, the message they are trying to convey. As an example of what they mean, increasing the text size of Auricle in some browsers will eventually force the drop down menus (fixed size elements over which I don't have control) out of the left and right hand boundaries I set and they then intrude into the article areas. Not pretty perhaps, but some may argue that preserving the resizable text function is more important than aesthetics. Another contributory factor is the variable ways in which different browsers handle style sheets and specifically font sizing. Netscape 4 in particular is notoriously bad in this regard.
Disabling resizable text by specifying fixed font sizes in a style sheet can seriously disadvantage some potential users and in an educational context may attract criticism or worse. All levels of education in the UK are now covered by the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001 (SENDA) which amended the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 to include education within its scope. Also, the Human Rights Act 1998 has potential implications. In the US the the U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines have similar implications as the UK SENDA. Many other countries now have similar legal drivers.
Is there an easy solution? There are a number of approaches. First, designers can offer alternative less visually sophisticated stylesheets or themes for users who value flexibility over aesthetics. Second designers could design stylesheets using only relative font sizes, e.g. instead of specifying 'font-size:11pt' it could become 'font-size:75%'. Third, designers come to view accessible design as an aesthetic value in its own right.
I believe that Content Managment Solutions like PostNuke, in which I include the pMachine engine behind Auricle, should be able to present at least body text and article/story/news elements as resizable text.
Unfortunately, most of the current default 'themes' provided in PostNuke are fixed font but there is one which either by accident or design does allow resizing so it can be done. What's also interesting that even an extensive search on the web couldn't uncover themes which declared themselves to be accessible; in fact I broadened the search to include stylesheets generally and the result was much the same. I came to the conclusion that it will probably be necessary to develop our own if we were to go down the CMS route more permanently. The PostNuke developers do appear to be aware of the issue and so it will be interesting to see whether the next release of PostNuke does provide better examples of themes which are more accessible.
What's really required, however, is a general raising of awareness in the web designer/developer community that accessibility needs to become a key factor in the design process. What we seem to lack are outstanding examples of exemplary design like those of 'css Zen Garden' but which are nevertheless accessible. So often 'accessible' web designs appear to be low in aesthetic values … but I may just be ignorant of such fine examples; if anyone knows any please let Auricle know so that we can disseminate the information.
In the interim I've been experimenting with the consequences of modifying the default themes within PostNuke to make them more accessible. Whilst it's fairly easy to substitute relative instead of absolute font sizing the liberal use of tables as layout devices is more difficult to deal with. Sometimes the use of a table is totally justified, e.g. as a calendar control, but on many occasions tables are being used when a division (DIV) element would have been more appropriate.
Evaluating PostNuke has made me more aware of the accessibility limitations in some of our other work and so the effort has been worthwhile.
A worthy read for readers interested in accessibility is the Dive into Accessibility book by Mark Pilgrim available online. Here's a little example of the grounded advice you'll find within the narrative:
“Use relative font sizes in browsers that can handle them, and absolute font sizes in Netscape 4, which does not reliably support relative font sizes.”
Mark's accessible site is a particularly important example to us because it is powered by Movable Type another content management system (or weblog engine) so he shows us it can be done. If you want instant empathy with what it's like to use systems both with and without resizable fonts then I recommend you look at Mark's example of 'Lillian' a lady with visual impairment in 'day 26' of his book
Maxdesign a commercial web design company provides us with another good introduction to relative font sizing.
The JISC Techdis site is a useful resource for further information as is the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
JISC's senior management briefing on Disability, Technology and Legislation: provides a useful overview about the issues.
Again, I'm interested in any examples of beautiful designs which are nevertheless accessible so if you know of any please post a comment.
I'm on holiday next week but my colleagues are still here so continue to watch this space.
