Hi Guys.

Last month I read an article in a magazine talking about Accessability for the visually impaired and the laws governing them and read what I already knew about commercial websites and how they must abide by the Disability Discrimination Act.

What I was VERY suprised to read was that the European Parliament has been passing through signed a "declaration" that would mean that all "Public websites" will have to abide by standard accessabilty practices by 2010 or you could face court.

"Public Websites" mean every website made to the public.

I was alarmed by this cos this would mean a large number of XOOPS users would fall foul of this law if they live within Europe regardless of whether they run a business or not.

So i've decided to let you all know what things you can change to make your site comply. There will probably be other things you can do but i will add the things I know.

1. All text must be resizable in all browsers - use % instead of px as Internet Explorer (IE) cant resize text sized in px (typical of IE to be different ) .
2. Make sure important images such as linked (href), photos & Diagram images use Alt tags. Background images dont need this. Images with no content value can have alt='*' so they will be ignored.
3. If your link is going to open a new window then say it in plain text. As some people with visual impairement will get confused because they will think the back button is broken.

As i said, there will probably be other things you can do but you will need to do some research for the time being and i will add any new stuff to this list as i get it.

Hope this helps with your theme designing.

Well, I am looking forward to seeing them enlarge the Mona Lisa.

Heres a link for more info on this law:


Click Here


Right, heres a wee tip.

In your CSS file find the line that defines the body tag.

put in this line

Quote:

This is to define a default text size.

Now whenever you want to define a text size for different parts of your theme use % instead of px. Such as:

110% for news titles
115% for Block Titles

etc

This will then result in your text being able to resize in ALL browsers.

Wouldn't have it been cheaper for EU to give all visually impaired citizens proper glasses.
Hope they don't make it law, to have all public websites translated to all EU languages now..

Hmmm, considering some people cant get strong enough glasses or cant see at all that wouldnt work. You also have people who's visual impairment is worsening every so often there is no point in giving them glasses.

Some people have to use browsers that read the text and play it as sound. which is why you have to do the Alt tags.

Also, how much of your time would it take up to go into your CSS file and change those settings.

What i find funny is that they are making these changes law and have a look at there home page, this list for languages to choose from cant be resized because they are images

And on reading that article that i have linked to above, it seems we ALL non-compliant. I've tried accessing my XOOPS website via a mobile phone and it doesnt work.

My site own theme i made tries it best last time I Ran thru it all to be set on % percent, where it can.
This allows IE to be theme adjustable for fonts for people who can't see very well like my elders in my own family who now need glasses being in there 50+...

This is one reason I Choose XOOPS to begin as it could do this very easy and not just the text yet the whole site.

If you get stuck finding CSS tags use webdeveloper with firefox helps to find it all in the webpage you are looking at.

I would say $%#$@%% the EU government, but I'll say screw the EU government since this is a public forum. The government already has too much of control of peoples' personal lives. They can forget it, they'll probably get their way anyway since they are the government, but just because they are the government doesn't mean they have respect. Respect is earned and not giving my a position in society. What are they gonna do next?force every person living in a country to speak all the languages spoken in the EU?!#$#%%$@#Does that mean I would have to learn french, german, hungarian, Irish, italian, polish, slovakian, swedish, spanish,etc.................?I mean as in if they force us to make our personal websites in every european language, than they would have to force is to speak every single EU langauge too. We shouldn't just sit here and let the government do something we don't agree with. We should make a plan and do something about it. We are the ones that make websites and stuff like that. The government has its people, but there's a difference between us and those people that work for the government. We do it because we like doing it( like making websites, like technology etc), the people working for the government do it because they have to, they don't have a choice. They might like working with websites too and exploring technology but who they work for is the difference. We work for ourselves they work for someone who tells them what to do so we have more power. Our love for what we do comes from the heart, and what the government people comes from instructions. Well, I don't know what else to say about it, I hope all of you get what I'm sorta saying here and agree with me cuz the EU government is really starting to take it too far. At least I think so. Let me know what ya'll think?!

Mine is worsening too. Maybe, that shouldn't be law. It is a natural process which every one of us will go thru..

This might sound silly or weird, just take the language issue! in that simple sense of that freedom and discrimination. Wouldn't it be discrimination against any group of peoples with no knowledge of English or French, to have websites only in any other language?!


Now when we bring that politics in that website, I think it will destroy plenty.
We might argue "on the basis of our freedom" to have our font as big or small as we want.
We might take the issue from a differently angle and say we are artists, creators and we have a different set of rules.

Or better yet, have a sticker like the warning on the tobacco box.
Smoking is bad, it is breeding cancer.
Now we will have the sticker from the ministry of health pasted in the footer, as " Warning ! from the ministry of health! "This website's content is displayed in small font and can deteriorate your sight".

We purchased a set of software that is creating font, that big or that small. It is not our fault.
The browsers will have to start detect small font now. and block these particular websites.

At the end of the day, I think many companies will move their servers out of the EU territory, to avoid clashing with the new law.

Then who is losing ? it will be similar to that tax avoidence, -with offshore companies regsitered on these islands
I have better start thinking about that - with a huge server on an island somehwere.

Finally, are they going to block all websites that are not hosted inside the boundary of the EU?

Humanity is crashing.

Yeah I can see what you are saying too, but I still hate the the way governments are treating their own people.

Xoops isn't!
If we could build democracy here clearly and voting systems! We lead the way in most other fields, why not show the system how not to crash between us?