Apologies if this is in the wrong location, but I can't seem to find a forum specifically for 508 and xhtml type things.
I'm looking at reworking most of the forms (certainly all the 'user' forms and possibly those for tutors as well if time allows) to be a bit more useable for non-visual browsers.
1. Labels for everything!
2. Cleaning vital Javascript out of the forms (assuming I find any that)
3. Breaking the <td>fieldName</td><td>field</td> and replacing it with something more semantic. I'm told that screen readers start crying when they see the a form in tables but I haven't verified it myself yet.
4. Fieldsets/legends where applicable.
Is this something already in the Moodle development plan and, if so, is there anything I should be reading before starting? Ideally I'd like to submit this for inclusion into the trunk when I'm done.
Thanks,
G
Gav, this is currently the big focus for 1.5 and much is being fixed in this area. See test.moodle.com for example and discussions in the Themes forum.
There is so much work to do and we need all the help we can get. If you could install 1.5 and send me patches via the bug tracker for specific pages and specific forms that you find needing work that would be incredibly helpful right now.
There is so much work to do and we need all the help we can get. If you could install 1.5 and send me patches via the bug tracker for specific pages and specific forms that you find needing work that would be incredibly helpful right now.
There was some talk of adopting an external library to generate the form HTML. Did/will this happen for 1.5?
I'm aware that I'm giving opinions before I've contributed anything but that seems like an excellent way to proceed in the long term.
Personally, I tend to use a homegrown system that's not disimilar to the pear package quickform for any form heavy web-app.
The Pros....
1. Stupidly quick to make changes globally.
2. Forces a standard approach to form widget layout.
3. Opens up the possibility of automated client side validation
The Cons...
1. Very time consuming to carry every form from an existing system over.
2. Quite easy to get into subclass-hell when people keep on extending and extending the basic elements to suit their own needs.
just my $0.02
G
Personally, I tend to use a homegrown system that's not disimilar to the pear package quickform for any form heavy web-app.
The Pros....
1. Stupidly quick to make changes globally.
2. Forces a standard approach to form widget layout.
3. Opens up the possibility of automated client side validation
The Cons...
1. Very time consuming to carry every form from an existing system over.
2. Quite easy to get into subclass-hell when people keep on extending and extending the basic elements to suit their own needs.
just my $0.02
G
It hasn't yet but it's a priority for me.
I was originally planning to do the accessibility/XHTML at the same time as implementing templates, but it turned out to be a lot easier to do the XHTML/CSS etc in place first (everyone can help and users benefit immediately), and then tackle templates at a more relaxed place over successive versions, fixing pages one-by-one.
There were several Smarty-based solutions I was looking at ...
I was originally planning to do the accessibility/XHTML at the same time as implementing templates, but it turned out to be a lot easier to do the XHTML/CSS etc in place first (everyone can help and users benefit immediately), and then tackle templates at a more relaxed place over successive versions, fixing pages one-by-one.
There were several Smarty-based solutions I was looking at ...
Martin,
I've made some changes to the quiz module to improve accessibility, specifically, I've been removing the need for javascript in the paginated form. If this would be useful to the community could I email the blocks to you or would you prefer I posted them here?
Thanks,
G
I've made some changes to the quiz module to improve accessibility, specifically, I've been removing the need for javascript in the paginated form. If this would be useful to the community could I email the blocks to you or would you prefer I posted them here?
Thanks,
G
Great! Best would be an issue filed in the bug tracker with diffs or whole files attached to it (against latest CVS). Thanks!