Thursday, December 27, 2007

jQuery.Accessible

What is this ?

  • This plugin aims to be a collection of snippets that improve accessibility for websites.
  • It also includes a set of "recommendations" coded as tests to improve accessibilty (even beyond javascript).
  • These recommendations can be tested against a page, and get a summary of the results.

How to use it ?

  • First add a call to jquery.js (duh!).
  • Add jquery.accessible.js. This contains the engine for rules/fixes and a set of predefined ones.
  • Right after this, you are ready to run the fixes by calling jQuery.accessible(). You can pass in a hash to specify, with the id and true or false, which ones to run. IMPORTANT: don't call this function inside document.ready, call it right away instead.
If you want to run the tests in your page:
  • Add jquery.accessible.validator.js after jquery.accessible.js.
  • Call jQuery.accessible.runTests(). (right away too)
  • You can optionally indicate where to output the results, with a selector as first argument.

What else ?

  • This plugin is mostly a proof of concept for now.
  • The author's intention is to get developers to collaborate, in order to consolidate a large number of improvements to websites' accessibility.
  • Allowing any developer to make his/her site, much more accessible, with little effort.
If you have something to say or contribute, please:

Links:

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a great idea! I'm looking forward to the next release. I'm currently using it to double check sites I create. I build government sites and anything government is requires to be web accessability compliant by law.

The completed project has potential to become a standard remotly hosted developer tool on section508.gov. It could be compiled to a single js file so that anyone remotely can test their site easily.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.section508.gov/devtools/accessible.validator.js"></script>

Very Usefull..

Ariel Flesler said...

Hi
  Thank you for your compliment, I stopped developing it after I got 0 feedback on it, on jQuery usergroup.
I do agree it's a great idea, beware that those tests and fixes are mostly "examples". Some might not be 100% accurate. I added many links to check, for each test.

If you add some tests of yours, and you want to share them.. If you want, I'll add them to a future release, or we could link to them somewhere.

Cheers.

Cherryaa said...

Hi Ariel

I have already apologised for underestimating your plugin! Thanks for the heads up.

I'm excited about the TODOs in your script, many of which would solve the issues we've been discussing in the Google group thread. Looks like you're well ahead of the game :)

Forgive me if I'm failing to spot the obvious, but couldn't you include some "fix-all"s in your plugin? I'm thinking about adding tabs & accesskeys if none are defined, and automatically fixing null links.

Cheers, and once again I apologise for understimating your plugin.
Cherry.

Ariel Flesler said...

Hi Cherryaa (cherry austin right?)
No offense taken. The plugin is meant to be used in a "fix-all" way, you just call $.accessible() and it will execute the fixes. The idea was to specify which with a hash, but some would be on by default.
I'd gladly add more fixes, I wanted to have as much as possible.
But I'm not very experienced on accessibility, I read many articles and created this small "engine" for JS fixes. Hoped to get some more from other devs...

So.. if you can think of some, send me the code and preferably some links quoting it, and I'll add.

Cheers.

Cherryaa said...

Yup, that's me :D

You seem to have "dived into accessibility" quite impressively, Ariel!

I've blogged your plugin, hope you don't mind - http://jquery.cherryaustin.com

Before I make any suggestions, I'd better make sure you haven't already covered them :)
Cherry

Ariel Flesler said...

Hi Cherry
I'm glad you decided to blog about Accessible(too bad you chose the other preloader script heh).

I don't think you should actually advice adding Accessible just now, as it's an early beta, it won't fail, but it just has too few fixes.
I need more fixes to make it to a usable release.
That depends on outer collaboration :)
So... get fixes!

Cheers Cherry

Joe McCann said...

Ariel,

I am going to try to use some of your source code in one of my current projects. I believe accessibility is grossly overlooked and your plugin is definitely a start in the right direction. Please don't give up on it!

Joe

www.subprint.com

Ariel Flesler said...

Hi Joe

I sort of gave up on this plugin long ago.
I got nearly no feedback/interest when I posted it, so I just abandoned it.

If you figure out more useful hacks like the ones included, send them to me and I'll add them to a new release.
Thanks

Unknown said...

Hey, sorry to hear you gave it up. We are looking to use something like this also. We do lots of Open Source software and it takes a bit more than the field of dreams approach to do a project and get users. Good ideas are part of the key. If you would like some help with those aspects let me know.

Ariel Flesler said...

Hi, thanks for the comment.

As I said, if you have some snippets, send them to me or post them and I'll include them into a new release.

Cheers

Anonymous said...

so Have you got back on this??... I mean have not given up on this... personally I think this is a grand idea ... would love to see it grow... even if few others have see the potential...
cheers to the un-noticed...

jeremyBass

Ariel Flesler said...

Thanks for the support. But yes, I sort of gave up on this.

Sorry :)