Email interview - Dan Ballance, Calderdale College

Interview: Dan Ballance - College Web Designer

From: Joanna Flynn
Sent: 11 December 2007 09:34
To: Dan Ballance
Subject: Accessibility Enquiry

Hi Dan,

I am studying for my Degree in Graphic Design and my current project is Accessibility. Patrick mentioned that you are changing the website to be more accessible. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions about this?

- What made you make the decision to make the site accessible?
- Have you planned how the new site will look?
- What alterations are you making?
- Will you style the site with CSS? (I have always laid out my websites with tables, which is not advised from an accessible point of view. Even though I know CSS quite well I’ve never used it for positioning purposes so am a little nervous!)
- Are you putting in any hidden links for screen readers etc?
- Will you use Javascript or any other computer languages that may not be compatible?

I’m sure there are more questions too! I would really appreciate your comments though as I too am designing all future websites to be accessible. It has turned everything I have learnt so far on its head and I now need to start again from the beginning almost and start learning again!!

I could come and see you in the New Year if that’s more convenient?

Kindest regards
Joanna Flynn

______________________________________________________

From: Dan Ballance
Sent: 11 December 2007 09:59
To: Joanna Flynn
Subject: RE: Accessibility Enquiry

Hiya Joanna,

I will take them one by one and only have a few minute, so sorry if my thinking is a bit garbled:

1 - primarily, the law. all public sector organisations have a legal responsibility to make their web sites accessible to these standards. Here are the bbc guidelines, an example of very good practise in the industry:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/newmedia/accessibility/

here is the internet body involved in accessibility:

http://www.w3.org/WAI/

2 - Yes, the site has been planned from the outset, in both design as well as in terms of the structuring of the code. the site has been written to allow for 'templates' - meaning that a new design can be wrapped around the core of the site at a later date should a look and feel be desired.

3 - The site is being completely re-written. the main changes are technical and are in the grammar of the code being used. The current site is written to very poor standards. The new site is written to conform to 'xhtml 1.0 strict':

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/

4 - Most certainly. The new site conforms to the latest standards, meaning that there is a separation of content (the xhtml) and appearance (the css). Almost all of the css lives in separate pages called in from the head. the exception to this rule is where i am dynamically generating a css class in php on the server and i need to feed a style property into the xhtml page as it is generated on the server. the site is actually written in php, which means that all data is stored in a mysql database, and as content is requested by the user, data is pulled from the database and converted into the required xhtml by the php code.

You really should try to leave behind table based layouts - they are a thing of the past. it can be quite challenging to master css based layouts, but with a little perseverance you will manage it. i have two main tips for you. firstly, think about the web page as a newspaper or magazine. the page has a flow and elements are either inline or block elements within that flow. elements can then also be floated to the left or right and taken out of the main page flow. to understand css layout you must think like this - the web page is a magazine with content flowing across it. once you make the conceptual change you will be well on your way! My second piece of advice is to use the internet, use google! Ever time you are stuck, google the terms (ie float firefox inline margin invisible) and you will find all of the articles you need to master the dark art of cross-browser compliant css ;-)

5 - The page open with a 'text only' link at the opening of the page. And there is then a hidden 'skip to content' link that will only be seen by screen readers and some mobile devices. There maybe more, but it is not quite finalised yet.

6 - For javascript i follow a philosophy of 'unobtrusive javascript' or sometimes called 'progressive enhancement' (google them!). In this way of designing, everything must work with javascript turned off, and javascript is only used to enhance the users experience - it never depends upon it. All javascript is loaded in from the head of the page and never placed inline.

Ok, very busy