[Irl-dean] (no subject)

[drice at nda.ie]

There are some fundamental accessibility issues here that, dare I say it, circumvent the NDA IT Accessibility guideliens for the Web and WCAG. 1.0. neither set of guidelines 

Of the .chm files from Irish sites that I downloaded, none of the 
constituent HTML conformed to either all of the WCAG 1.0 Priority 1 
checkpoints or all of the Priority 1 NDA IT Accessibilty Gudeilines v1.1 
for the Web.  The potentail may exist for this HTML to be made accessible, but in practice it would appear that this is not the case.

The "Help" file contained with these documents lists 26 keyboard shortcuts that must be learnt to use this user agent without a keyboard. 
 
Pages cotained within a .chm file are not addressible on thier own.
Content contained in hte .chm format does not confrom to the following NDA IT Accessibility Guidelines v 1.1 for the Web (references to similar WCAG 1.0 guidelines alos included):


"There are 13 main file types searched by Google in addition to standard 
web formatted documents in HTML." (
http://www.google.com/help/faq_filetypes.html) but .chm is not one of 
them.  I carried out a number of text searches on content contained in a 
couple of .chm documents on the web and go no hits back from Google.
http://www.google.com/help/faq_filetypes.html

These files can be read on all computers with Microsoft ®© Windows 95 + ®©
  with Internet Explorer®© version 4 or higher. They do not require a separate reader.

This is most definitely not a solution to web accessibility.  Public money would be better spent in buidling capacity within public sector 
organisation around producing content that is accessible to the widest 
demographic of people possible than using it to outsource the 
organisation's document conversion fuctions

6.3 Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other 
programmatic objects are turned off or not supported. 

1.12 Ensure that documents can be read without style sheets
WAI checkpoint 6.1

Full WAI text: "Organize documents so they may be read without style 
sheets. For example, when an HTML document is rendered without associated style sheets, it must still be possible to read the document."

3.2 Create documents that validate to published formal grammars. 
[Priority 2] 
For example, include a document type declaration at the beginning of a 
document that refers to a published DTD (e.g., the strict HTML 4.0 DTD). 

needs a proprietary user agent

Guideline 6. Ensure that pages featuring new technologies transform 
gracefully.

Guideline 8. Ensure direct accessibility of embedded user interfaces.

information is not seperated from presentation as css connot be 
overwritten or turned off.


Guideline 4.2 Ensure that user interfaces are accessible or provide an 
accessible alternative(s)

1.      At least one plug-in required to access the content conforms to at least the default set of conformance requirements of the User Agent 
Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) 1.0 at Level A plus the sets of 
requirements (a) through (i) (below) that apply. If required plug-ins are not accessible, an alternative solution is provided that conforms to WCAG 2.0. If inaccessible plug-ins are available, then a method for obtaining an accessible plug-in is provided from the content. [V] 


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