Options for Users
mod_accessibility presents users with a choice of views on a page.
Users may switch freely between the different views to select whatever
is best for a page: this will be particularly useful where a page
contains useful information but presents it in a manner the user
finds problematic.
In the current implementation, mod_accessibility adds a page views
toolbar to each page, with quick tabbed-access. This can be configured
to appear at the start or end of every page served, or in the head.
Future enhancements will include a protocol for browsers to offer
these choices to users as a browser function (taking it out of the
page altogether), and a preferences page for the user to select a
persistent default view.
Options are:
- Asis View
- Markup is tidied, and deprecated presentational markup is stripped.
No other changes: frames are untouched.
- Medium View
- (formerly Standard View)
- Markup is tidied, and deprecated presentational markup is stripped.
Frames are expanded, with framed contents shown inline.
- Noframes View
- Similar to the medium view, but reduces frames to links, saving
the overhead of retrieving the contents after the titles have been cached.
- Full view
- Similar to the medium view, but additionally provides titles for
all links to aid navigation. Where a title is already provided
this has no effect, but in other cases mod_accessibility fetches the
linked page to check the title. Titles are cached, so the performance
hit this causes happens once-only.
- Betsie view
- This emulates most of the features of the BBC
betsie program:
- Markup is tidied, and deprecated presentational markup is stripped.
- All tables are linearised
- Stylesheets and commented scripts are stripped
- Images are replaced by their ALT attributes
- Applets are removed altogether
- Objects are not touched (in view of its treatment of images, applets, etc
this may be an oversight in Betsie; we'll change if they do).
- Frames are linearised (this is not strictly betsie-compatible)
- Outline View
- This generates a Table of Contents for the page from the heading
elements (other important elements, such as tables and frames, may
be included in a future revision). Useful as a quick overview and
navigation aid.
- Links View
- This lists the links in the body of a page, showing the information
most likely to serve accessibility in a links list:
- The Destination URL of the link
- The Title of the link
- The link text from the page