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Accessibility Checking... With Just A Browser!
Guideline 9. Design for device-independence
Similar to guideline number 3, is this one. By using simple and standard (non-proprietary) mark-up and not applying styles to a Web page, but instead using CSS to style elements, you are in fact designing for device independence. If your code is the lowest common denominator, then your page will likely be viewable on a greater range of browsers. As such there are a number of things to check using Opera:
- How does it behave with images switched off? (see section 1)
- How does it look with styles switched off? (see section 3)
- How might tables render if tables are not supported by the device? (see section 5)
- How does the page behave with scripting disabled? (see section 6)
Also bear in mind that for true device independence, your screen layout should be flexible enough to accommodate a 1280x1024 pixel screen size just as easily as it can a handheld device (such as a Pocket PC’s 240x320 pixel size). No special tricks in Opera here -- just disable everything as detailed above then try resizing a window. There's a BIG challenge for you!
Guideline 10. Use interim solutions
This is a hotch-potch of guidelines that aim to address fallback solutions. In other words, if a browser doesn't support a certain piece of accessibility mark-up, how can you work around it? Among the checkpoints is the recommendation to "allow users to turn off spawned windows, do not cause pop-ups or other windows to appear and do not change the current window without informing the user". Hey, here's something we can check using Quick Preferences (F12):
With pop-ups disabled in Opera, try navigating around your site. If you encounter any problems, you may have a rogue window.open lurking around that is not working (for more information about making pop-ups accessible in such circumstances read The Perfect Pop-Up).
Final four guidelines
The final four guidelines are listed here so that you can go away and find out what they are. Unfortunately, they are slightly more obscure than the previous guidelines, and cannot be easily checked using Opera in the same way that you might check for images and alt attributes, for example.
- Guideline 11. Use W3C technologies and guidelines
- Guideline 12. Provide context and orientation information
- Guideline 13. Provide clear navigation mechanisms
- Guideline 14. Ensure that documents are clear and simple
Summary
Opera has a multitude of options to customize the way you view a Web page, and many of these can be used to ascertain how accessible your Web page is. This is an ideal way to check the development of a page template for a site, for example, while you’re on the move, perhaps on a laptop with no immediate connection to the Internet.
Opera is not the only browser to offer such options -- Mozilla also has a number of similar options, and Internet Explorer has a host of plug-ins that can be used to extend the browser's functionality. But for out-of-the-box options, Opera is difficult to beat.