[savannah-help-public] Which Savannah accessibility problems violate the accessibility standard

[Richard Stallman]

I suggest concentrating first on this set of problems.

------- Start of forwarded message -------
X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_50,RDNS_DYNAMIC,
        TVD_RCVD_IP autolearn=disabled version=3.3.2
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2015 08:06:11 +0200
From: _mallory <address@hidden>
To: Richard Stallman <address@hidden>
Subject: Re: Savannah.gnu.org
Message-ID: <address@hidden>
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="opJtzjQTFsWo+cga"
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <address@hidden>


[1:text/plain Hide]

Not supposed to be a PDF, I think it was one file off.

_m
On Sun, Jul 12, 2015 at 08:33:39AM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> 
>   > Here's a list. It's in markdown because everyone else asks me for
>   > markdown. 
> 
> What I see is a PDF file and a PNG file.  I would be glad to get
> plain text with markdown -- could you send that?
> 
> -- 
> Dr Richard Stallman
> President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
> Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.
> 

[2:text/plain Hide Save:gnu.md (7kB)]

#WCAG violations on gnu.savannah.org

##Guideline 2.1.1 Keyboard access - Violation

http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/#keyboard-operation

###Search result pages

[+] display criteria clickables are unfocusable. All clickables must be 
keyboard focusable, and when clicked they need to move focus to wherever is 
most appropriate (if the clicked thing vanishes, move focus to the next 
focusable or the other thing you can click to re-show stuff again).

###Project pages

Submenu on [an example project page] is unavailable to sighted keyboarders.  
Either use JS or CSS to show the submenus.

One way to repair this is, when JavaScript is available, have not only hover 
but also :focus of the anchor gives it a class. In CSS, .theClass+ul's 
visibility changes to visible. When another anchor gets hover or focus, the 
class is removed.  No JavaScript means the top links must link to a page which 
lists the submenu options (like an e-commerce product menu category linking to 
a category page listing subcategory links).

##Guideline 1.1.1 Non-text content - Violation

http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/#text-equiv
"All non-text content that is presented to the user has a text alternative that 
serves the equivalent purpose, except for the situations listed below."

If something is represented visually and matters, it needs text representation. 
 "Export" link has a class "unavailable" on it, visually striking it out. No 
non-visual way to show this link should be unavailable for any reason. Suggest 
making it a disabled and non-focusable link.

##Guideline 1.1.1 Non-text content - Violation

Technique H67 http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H67.html

On the projects page, an RSS icon without an alt attribute means often 
Assistive Technology may attempt to read out the image src URL instead, when 
either alt="" should tell AT to ignore the decorative image, or useful alt text 
should be added ('RSS feed').

##Guideline 3.3.2 Labels or instructions - Violation

http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/#minimize-error-cues

Labels should be programmatically linked to inputs.
http://www.w3.org/TR/2015/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20150226/H44 
using the for attribute.

Add (visually-hidden if needed) labels to search section: "search for" + text 
field + in + "category" + select.

Even if visually hidden (not using display: none, visibility:hidden or a 
combination of overflow: hidden + 0 height, these will also hide the text from 
AT), like absolutely positioning it and pulling it offscreen, will still allow 
them to be accessed by AT.

##Guideline 2.4.3 Focus Order - Violation

http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/#navigation-mechanisms-focus-order

Visual tab order is confusing as it's first a left column, then a right column, 
and finally the middle. Of course I suggest reordering the code anyway. At the 
very least, any right columns ought to be last in tab order.

I'd argue that because on project pages, the top menu gets focused before the 
right sidebar, which is opposite visually of pages like the main page where the 
whole right column gets focus before anything visually in the middle. So 
consistency and logical order (like left-middle-right columns perhaps) are 
minimum.

##Guideline 2.4.1 Bypass Blocks - Violation

http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/#navigation-mechanisms-skip

More: http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/navigation-mechanisms-skip.html

Skip links would be nice: while I'm also going to suggest the main page part 
not be stuck at the end of the HTML source, I still want to be able to jump to 
the relevant part without the Thousand Tabs of Death.

Similarly, I suggest roles: navigation and main at least. Maybe search as well 
since that may be some people's first thing in a repo of repos.

##Not violations

###Guideline 2.4.6 Headings and Labels, 2.4.10 Section Headings and 1.3.1 Info 
and Relationships

http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/#navigation-mechanisms-descriptive
http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/#navigation-mechanisms-headings
http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/content-structure-separation-programmatic.html

Can't call this one a violation as it's listed as levels AA and AAA (but only 
because there exist some documents which cannot have headings, however there is 
zero reason not to have headings dictate page structure on Savannah).

Techniques: http://www.w3.org/TR/2015/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20150226/H42.html
http://www.w3.org/TR/2015/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20150226/H69.html

The text above the menu links ought to be headings ("Login status", "This 
page"). Headings should not be part of the lists but above them.

Currently the site is doing the Failure Example:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2015/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20150226/F2.html

Using bold text and positioning to make text look visually like headings and 
convey topic meaning.

###Guidelines 2.4.5 Multiple Ways

http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/#navigation-mechanisms-mult-loc

Some text is mentioned whereas the link to that text is far away: Make 
"Register New Project" a link instead of just bold text.

###Guideline Link Purpose (Link only)

http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/#navigation-mechanisms-link

Not a violation as it only pertains to AAA-level. I suggested "Read more" links 
be given more context. A technique: 
http://accessibility.oit.ncsu.edu/training/html/readmore.html

However these are mostly for pages with many Read More links, while here I only 
saw one. When bringing up a list of links in AT, the text presented is the link 
text, making many "Read Mores" a bit useless. However with just one, a user can 
decide to explore the surrounding context for more information.

###Title attributes

While some texts recommend using title attributes to add an "accessible name" 
to an element if another way isn't possible, titles suck in various ways, so 
try to avoid them.
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2013/01/using-the-html-title-attribute-updated/

And if they're not telling the user something they don't already know (if the 
title attribute it repeating link text) then it only gets in the way[1]

###Guideline 4.1.1 Parsing

http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/#ensure-compat-parses

There are some HTML errors on the page. I'm not counting unclosed EMPTY tags 
like &lt;br&gt;.

###Font size

http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size

Users can zoom or enlarge the text size to read smaller text, but the goal 
would be to prevent people from needing to do so. At the (general) supposed 
default of ~16px font size, the "smaller" text renders at ~10px.

###Encoding

http://www.w3.org/International/O-charset

Note the option about XHTML only pertains to actual XHTML. The Savannah pages 
are sent from the server as HTML.

Everything else in the original list is just general HTML best-practices stuff, 
and a few usability points.

[1] mousetitle.png
------- End of forwarded message -------

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.