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Accessibility Checking... With Just A Browser!
Guideline 5. Create tables that transform gracefully
For many blind users, tables can cause real problems -- both tables that are used for layout purposes, and data tables. This guideline is primarily concerned with tables used for layout (data tables are a complicated area in themselves, to be covered in another article). In a nutshell, the layout you have on screen may be read back in a very strange manner by a screen reader (or when its accessed using a text browser such as Lynx) if you are not careful. To get an indication of how this works, you need to 'linearize' your table. You can do this online by visiting the W3C's Tablin tool. However, if you have Opera to hand you need just do the following:
File > Preferences > Page Style > Author mode > Tables
When you run a page with tables disabled, this is a good indication of how many users with assistive devices -- such as screen readers -- will experience your site, as in the sequence of the items they will come across. A good site will avoid using tables for layout purposes, instead using CSS.
Take a look at the BBC's site with tables linearized.
Guideline 6. Ensure that pages featuring new technologies transform gracefully
In other words, a lot of people might not have quite as flashy a browser as you, for a number of reasons. The biggest thing to look out for is client-side scripting -- what happens if the user has JavaScript disabled (or uses a browser that doesn’t support it)? It happens, perhaps as a heavy-handed way to stop annoying pop-up windows. Who knows -- all you need to understand is how your site reacts under these circumstances.
The guidelines suggest that where you have content in <script> tags, you should provide a <noscript> alternative. In Internet Explorer, the ability to disable JavaScript is hideously hidden in a depth of obscure settings (none of which refer to the term 'JavaScript'). In Opera, it's dead easy: just hit F12 and hey presto, the following menu appears ...
You will also see that you can quickly switch off other features that might be termed 'bells and whistles' in the 'Quick Preferences' options, including Java, plug-ins and the ability to read/write cookies. Very quickly you can switch a number of options off, and see how your site/page behaves.
View the BBC site with JavaScript disabled (can you spot the difference?).
In addition, you should be aware of other technologies that may not be available to all users, such as Java or any audio or video content. These, too, can be easily disabled in Opera using the quick preferences shown above or via the following route:
File > Preferences > Multimedia > Media Types
Guideline 7. Ensure user control of time-sensitive content changes
If you use HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" in a meta tag to cause a page to reload, you're going against this guideline. However, this cannot be easily ascertained using Opera. However, this guideline also refers to anything that moves on screen without the user's says-so. This might be DHTML, which can be checked by disabling JavaScript (see section 6) or it could refer to anmated images. These can also be quickly disabled using the Quick Preferences menu (F12):
Guideline 8. Ensure direct accessibility of embedded user interfaces
Not one that you can use Opera to check for, as far as I know. This guideline stresses the need for ensuring that anything embedded on a Web page is just as accessible as anything else on the page, whatever technology was used to create the embedded feature.