What a long, strange trip…
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I started the day with an e-mail from CTS, asking me how I put the “customize font” section on the blog. Well, at that point, I told him I couldn’t get into it, since this was a piece of javascript that came with the original Blogger template. I would e-mail it to him this evening.
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Later in the day, I was looking through my favorite links at the Daypop Top 40. Curiously, even though I had blogged about some of those issues, the Ink Well was not listed as a citation on anything. I just assumed they had some ranking criteria, and I fell outside their radar screen–which is really odd, especially with the blogChalking link. So, I did a search for “solonor” and found the Ink Well. But, mysteriously, their cached version of the page showed a blank section for the posts! I e-mailed Daypop to ask what I did wrong. They immediately responded with some questions, but were just as perplexed.
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One of the Daypop Top 40 was 30 days to a more accessible weblog from Mark Pilgrim’s dive into mark. Sounded interesting, so I went there.
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While reading today’s entry on labeling form elements, I remembered something I saw at scriptygoddess that referred to an entry in Mark’s blog. I had already gone through and tried to make sure I was using real links and removed ‘javascript:’ links. Now, I was reading about using relative font sizes.
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Semi-secure in the thought that I was doing my part for usability, I e-mailed Mark to ask him if the “customize font” thingy met the guidelines for accessibilty. He replied. (It never ceases to amaze me how accessible busy people like Daypop and Mark are to dweebs like me). The answer was, basically, “No, for two reasons: 1. It’s javascript, which not everyone runs; and 2. It forces the user to stop browsing and modify the page, rather than the page modifying for the user.”
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I thanked Mark (cursing him for making me have to go and change my blog) and asked him if there was anything else unsavory about it. He replied (again with amazing speed) that, for some reason, in the text-only Lynx browser none of the main content was appearing. DING!
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Mark researched it for me and found some stupid comment tag in the center content that I didn’t have closed properly (all this for a pair of dashes!). So, now my page shows up in the Lynx Viewer, and I’ll bet it shows up on Daypop again. I wrote CTS back and gave him the javascript, but I think I am going to go through the entire “30 days” tutorial pronto!