[TYPO3-hci] Kickoff: TYPO3 4.1 (suggestions)

[Christopher]

Benjamin Mack wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> I agree with Dmitry. Accessibility is nice, but not necessary for TYPO3 
> admins. It is necessary for the frontend, that's for sure. But the TYPO3 
> Backend cannot work run without JavaScript (already), so Christophers 
> statement "fall back on existing page-refreshing ... when javascript is 
> not present" is not possible at all. So now, if we use javascript OR 
> javascript w/ AJAX activity shouldn't bother much. Also it is true that 
> this would be an aweful lot of work to do.
> 
> So here would be my suggestion: Make the FE-editing accessible so 
> handicaped editors can work with the FE-mode. Would be way less work.
> 
> The only thing I see with AJAX (has little to do with Accessibility) is 
> the "Back-Button" problem since a bunch of my clients / editors are 
> comfortable with it.
> 
> greetings,
> benni.
> -SDG-
> 
> 
> Dmitry Dulepov wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>> Christopher wrote:
>>> But in any case, even if we were to decide to ignore item 6.3 
>>> altogether, the core parts of the BE could probably be made to 
>>> comply, without much difficulty, with all of WCAG 1 and 2 and most of 
>>> 3--meeting as many guidelines as possible is definitely the 
>>> preferable course.
>>
>> Who exactly needs this? Typo3 is not easy to learn and I afraid it 
>> will be even harder for people with visual disabilities (if possible 
>> at all). They will not use typo3 BE anyway. Thus I do not think it is 
>> worth spending time on developing "accessible" BE at all. It is the 
>> same as developing aircraft cabin accessible. So far no one did that 
>> and no one will do I think. It is simply not worth spending so much 
>> resources on it if one person of a million may be (!) will use it.
>>
>>> Plus, given that there is some interest in expanding TYPO3's userbase 
>>> into government and public institutions, accessibility will have to 
>>> be pursued at some point or other--and it'd be best to do it during 
>>> the 4.5-5.0 refactoring instead of rebuilding everything twice!
>>
>> Public institutions already use typo3: many universities, non-profit 
>> organizations, etc. They use due to features, not due to accessibility.
>>
>> Typo3 output is accessible since meets w3c standards. As to BE, it is 
>> for limited professionals only, nothing prevents any organization from 
>> using it (if they can manage to learn it of course). US government 
>> uses non-accessible Boeing aircrafts with pleasure even though their 
>> "BE" (cabin) is totally not "accessible".

I'm sorry Benni and Dmitry, but you're both wrong about this. In the 
first place, there are /many/ sorts of disabilities besides simple 
blindness, and a little bit of effort can go a /long/ way towards 
helping people with other sorts of access problems. In addition, 
creating leaner markup makes for faster page loads--I'd say TYPO3's BE 
is the slowest loading part of any CMS tool that I use on any kind of 
regular basis (the page tree frame alone, with only 20 pages visible is 
40k including javascript and even the markup alone is 28k!)--and as 
Elmar pointed out, lean code makes implementing Javascript and CSS 
changes quite easy.

I'm not trying to be confrontational here, but did either of you 
actually /read/ about WCAG Level 1 or 2? Simply restricting the BE to 
valid HTML would accomplish /almost the entire Level 1 checklist/. 
Reducing the number of table-based forms (and/or improving the existing 
ones) in the BE and building in sensible default CSS would achieve most 
of the rest of 1 /and/ 2 and would be a very good start on 3.

The BE already does reasonably well in some respects: it is possible to 
use much of it at least without using a mouse or pointing device at all, 
and as the existing skinning projects have shown, it is at least 
possible to change the look of most of it.

I don't understand why it's so common for people to assume that partial 
accessibility in web pages/applications is difficult to achieve. Please, 
if you're going to disagree with the suggestion, try to do it in a more 
informed way. What major, specific objections are there to any part of 
WCAG 1 or 2 besides item 6.3 which I've already mentioned?

-Christopher