Protected: Critical evaluation and self reflection

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Text resizing in browser

Screenshots showing how text resizes within the browser (major accessibility checkpoint). As I used relative values and not pixels this works up to two steps without breaking the layout. All sizes above would most surely mean the user needs a different device with actual screen magnifying capabilities as opposed to a normal web browser. See also: http://www.etre.com/blog/2007/09/how_to_resize_text_in_your_bro/

Online: new header images in content pages + generic dummy page

http://vitalis-greetsiel.de/relaunch07/vitalis_content_well.htm

http://vitalis-greetsiel.de/relaunch07/vitalis_content_um.htm

http://vitalis-greetsiel.de/relaunch07/vitalis_content_hotel.htm

http://vitalis-greetsiel.de/relaunch07/vitalis_content_rest.htm
Dummy Page:
http://vitalis-greetsiel.de/relaunch07/hotel.htm

Dissertation online

Link to PDF of dissertation

The version above does not include websites in the bibliography and has wrong page numbers for this section in the table of contents.
This is the correct and otherwise identical version:

cklavery_dissertation07.pdf

New header image applied

New header images created

As not every image was wide enough for the header space of 930 pixels at a 1024×768 resolution I had to create simple montages which I think work quite well. The colour scheme in the right hand area derives from a colour picked within the actual image on the left.

Older Mindmaps

In the context of my previous post  it might be useful to upload my very rough, initial mindmaps from when I first thought about the proposed topic. I have ever since meant to update and upload these by using a tool like mindomo or mindmeister but have never quite come round to it.

My dissertation in a nutshell

Taking on board criticism and guidance from my tutors regarding the level of detail and lack of focus on the core argument demonstrated in the chapters I have submitted to date I went back to the drawing board and sketched out the gist of my dissertation on a piece of paper:

• Working title
  Making web accessibility sexy

• Aim of the study
  Highlighting common ground between web accessibility and the LOHAS movement which could change perceptions and thereby help web accessibility gaining further momentum beyond the current realms

• Method
  Comparing exemplary LOHAS products and principles with the notion of web accessibility

• Core argument
  Web accessibility and the LOHAS movement share a lot of almost unrecognised common ground and the former could learn a lot from looking at some successful principles and products that helped making LOHAS mainstream and being perceived as sexy.Slightly more elaborate but still concise:
  The underlying values and technical implications of web accessibility share a lot of common ground with the ideas and ethics of the LOHAS movement. Web accessibility is not assocciated with sexiness; in this respect it could learn a lot from looking at exemplary LOHAS ethics and products which are now mainstream and being perecieved as sexy.
  or:
  Web accessibility and LOHAS have many key aspects in common -> these similarities are almost unrecognised in current debates-> LOHAS is perceived as being sexy, web accessibility is not -> the latter could learn a lot in this respect from looking at successful LOHAS principles and products ->a perception of sexiness would help the cause of web accessibility

Testing the website in Lynx

See a simulation of how the website would be rendered by the Lynx browser; this is a popular check for accessibility and well formed code:

Background information:

• The Lynx browser is a text-only browser and is a fantastic tool for checking on the accessibility of any web page. It works in much the same way as any other Internet browser (such as Internet Explorer), except it doesn’t have support for JavaScript, Flash, CSS or images. As such, what you see on the screen is a rough approximation as to what a screen reader user will hear when browsing the site.
  Source: http://www.webcredible.co.uk/about-us/news/nov-2004.shtml
  

• Lynx is probably the most widely-used text-only browser, and is commonly used by those with visual or physical disabilities. It is available for Windows, UNIX and DOS, while a Mac version is planned in the future. Development occurs on an ad-hoc basis by a small open-source community so support is rather limited. A degree of technical knowledge is required to install any version of Lynx, and it is necessary to compile some versions before they can be used.
  Source: http://www.testpartners.co.uk/resources_browsers.htm

Solutions to the image display & resize problems in IE 6

After some more research it became clear that the issue described in my previous entry is quite common and has caused some headaches within the webdesign community.

I have duplicated some experiments (See here and here) by Richard Rutter for my layout with these acceptable solutions also allowing for resizing the window to 800×600:

http://vitalis-greetsiel.de/relaunch07/vitalis_content019.htm

http://vitalis-greetsiel.de/relaunch07/vitalis_content020.htm
(issue at 800×600: side scrolling may imply content on the right hand side when in fact it is just the rest of header image hidden by the overflow:hide command)

The rescaled right hand image does not look brilliant at 800×600 which I presume is due to it being a GIF which is not the preferred file format for photographic images anyway hence I will create a new JPG or PNG which should degrade better.