Amaya 5.3 - conformance to Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines
1.0
This is a review of Amaya version 5.3, assessing its conformance to the
Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 Recommendation. This is the
personal opinion of the reviewer, which may contain errors or omissions, and
is offered for the information and possible use of the Authoring Tool
Accessibility Guidelines working group
(AUWG). This review has not been approved or further assessed by
anyone. This review does not represent the opinion of the AUWG, W3C, or any of its members.
Comments on this review are invited, and should be sent to the
AUWG mailing list - w3c-wai-au@w3.org - whose archives are
publicly available.
Review information
- Tool reviewed:
- Amaya version 5.3 compiled from the release distribution, on a
macintosh G3 bronze keyboard powerbook running Mac OS X.1.3 with X
window system and Motif.
- Guidelines version:
- The 3 February 2000 Recommendation "Authoring Tool Accessibilty
Guidelines 1.0"
- Reviewer:
- Charles McCathieNevile
- Date:
- 26 March 2002. This review took approximately 5 hours.
Conclusions
Amaya does not meet any of the available conformance levels in the
Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. In particular it fails because
of a lack of accessibility testing and repair functionality, and to some
extent because the tool itself is still lacking in important accessibility
features for users. In other areas Amaya meets a large number of checkpoints
at all priority levels, and it seems that it could become conformant at level
double-A or triple-A.
Checkpoint by checkpoint assessment
Checkpoints:
- 1.1 Ensure that the author
can produce accessible
content in the markup
language(s) supported by the tool. [Priority 1]
- Yes. Amaya offers a source editing facility, and a structure editing
facility, to enable the author to directly edit content if
required.
- 1.2 Ensure that the tool
preserves all accessibility
information during authoring, transformations,
and conversions.
[Priority 1]
- Yes. Amaya provides some built-in
transforamtion possibilities, which preserve information,
- 1.3 Ensure that when the tool
automatically generates markup it conforms to the W3C's Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 [WCAG10]. [Relative Priority]
- Yes, to level A. The WCAG checkpoints are supported as follows:
- Priority 1 checkpoints
- Implemented
- 1.1 - inserting any kind of object requires a text
alternative to be provided. (Except in the case of
producing SVG)
- Not applicable - these are functions not supported by
Amaya
- 1.3, 1.4, 6.2, 6.3, 7.1, 12.1
- Not Applicable - these are decisions made by the author
- 1.2, 2.1, 4.1, 5.1, 5.2, 9.1, 11.4, 14.1
- Priority 2 Checkpoints
- Implemented
- 3.2 - Amaya produces valid HTML, XHTML, SVG, MathML, or
mixed-namespace XML combining these languages.
- 11.1 - Amaya uses the latest W3C specifications for each
of HTML, XHTML, SVG, MathML, and CSS
- 11.2 - Amaya does not automatically generate markup using
deprecated elements
- Partially implemented
- 3.3 - Amaya uses style sheets to provide presentation
control, but does not enable the extraction of style sheets
from individually styled content elements.
- Not implemented
- 3.4 - Amaya uses a mixture of relative and absolute
measures in generating styles
- Not applicable - these are functions not supported by
Amaya
- 6.4, 6.5, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, 8.1, 9.2, 9.3, 10.1,
12.2
- Not Applicable - these are decisions made by the author
- 2.2, 3.1, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 5.4, 5.4, 10.2, 12.3, 12.4,
13.1, 13.2, 13.3, 13.4
- Priority 3 Checkpoints
- Implemented
- 11.3 Amaya provides language and content-type
identification
- 9.4 Amaya does not provide for complex positioning, so
the order of appeaance is the same as the order of
rendering.
- 5.5 Amaya generates tables with a caption element to
provide a summary.
- Not implemented
- 1.5, 5.6, 104 - Amaya does not generate redundant text
links for client-side image map links, abbreviated header
attributes, or form controls with default content
- Not Applicable - these are decisions made by the author
- 4.2, 4.3, 9.5, 10.5, 13.5, 13.6, 13.7, 13.8, 13.9, 13.10,
14.2, 14.3
- 1.4 Ensure that templates
provided by the tool conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
1.0 [WCAG10]. [Relative Priority]
- Not Applicable. Although there is a template
mechanism, Amaya does not provide any actual templates.
Checkpoints:
- 2.1 Use the latest versions of W3C Recommendations when they
are available and appropriate for a task. [Priority 2]
- Yes.
- 2.2 Ensure that the tool
automatically generates valid markup. [Priority 1]
- Yes.
- 2.3 If markup produced by the
tool does not conform to W3C specifications, inform the
author. [Priority 3]
- Yes. The author can find out in the case of
HTML by viewing the structure. In the case of XML the author is
automatically informed, and processing is discontinued, as required by
the XML specification.
Checkpoints:
- 3.1 Prompt the
author to provide equivalent
alternative information (e.g., captions,
auditory
descriptions, and collated
text transcripts for video). [Relative Priority]
- Yes, the author is required to enter a text alternative when
inserting any kind of object, or identifying a "hotspot" in a
client-side image map.
- 3.2 Help the author create
structured content and separate information from its presentation. [Relative Priority]
- Not to any conformance level. The only related WCAG checkpoint
(using a list
proposed by the reviewer in July 2001) for which prompting is
automatic is checkpoint 5.5 (priority 3) - Amaya automatically
prompts for a caption for every table created.
- 3.3 Ensure that prepackaged content
conforms to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 [WCAG10]. [Relative Priority]
- Not applicable
- 3.4 Do not automatically generate equivalent
alternatives. Do not reuse previously authored alternatives without
author confirmation, except when the function is known with certainty.
[Priority 1]
- Yes.
- 3.5 Provide functionality for
managing, editing, and reusing alternative
equivalents for multimedia objects. [Priority 3]
- No.
Checkpoints:
- 4.1 Check for
and inform the
author of accessibility
problems. [Relative Priority]
- No. Amaya does active checking for validity (WCAG 3.2, Priority 2)
but does no other accesssibility checking of content. (In addition,
Amaya fails to pick up the accessibility problem of missing alt
attributes even checking for validity - a bug in its validity
checking). Various features of Amaya, parrticularly the synchronised
views, allow for manual checking of certain WCAG checkpoints (although
Amaya does no other prompting for these checks to be done). The WCAG
checkpoints for which some functionality of Amaya supports checking are
as follows:
- Priority 1 checkpoints
- Implemented
- 12.1 - Amaya automatically presents each frame as a link,
with the name and title as available
- 6.3 - Because Amaya does not support scripts or applets
any function which relies on them will not work in
Amaya
- Partially implemented
- 1.1, 2.1, 6.1 - The alternative view can be compared with
the "main view" to ensure that there are good text
equivalents. However, checking long descriptions is not
easy, and is not described in the user manual.
- Not applicable - these are functions not supported by
Amaya
- 1.3, 1.4, 6.2, 7.1,
- Not implemented - no checking available
- 1.2, 4.1, 5.1, 5.2, 9.1, 11.4, 14.1
- Priority 2 Checkpoints
- Implemented
- 3.2 - Amaya validates code (except the bug in HTML
validation of the alt attributre noted above) and informs
the user.
- 11.1 - Amaya defaults to use the latest W3C
specifications of XHTML, SVG, MathML, and CSS, and to save
content in that default version.
- Partially implemented
- 3.5 - Amaya provides a table of contents view that can be
used to verify that headings are used appropriately
- 3.6, 3.7, 5.4 - Amaya shows the markup of the selected
element in the status bar, and the document can be
inspected in the structure view. This enables the author to
check if lists and quotations are marked up as such, and
whether things that are indented have used quotation
markup.
- 5.3 - the alternate view linearises content to enable the
author to check that it makes sense.
- 13.1 - The links view can be used to check that each link
makes sense on its own, out of context.
- Not implemented
- 2.2, 3.1, 3.4, 6.4, 6.5, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, 8.1, 9.2,
9.3, 10.1, 10.2, 11.2, 12.2, 12.3, 12.4, 13.3, 13.4
- Priority 3 Checkpoints
- Not implemented
- No functionality assists in checking for priority 3
accessibility errors
- 4.2 Assist authors in
correcting accessibility
problems. [Relative Priority]
- No.
- 4.3 Allow the author to preserve
markup not recognized by the tool. [Priority 2]
- Yes. But in some cases Amaya may not allow the
author to edit the document further. (There are some known bugs in
particular cases, which lead to Amaya not completely meeting this
checkpoint).
- 4.4 Provide the author with a
summary of the document's accessibility status. [Priority 3]
- No
- 4.5 Allow the author to
transform presentation
markup that is misused to convey structure into structural
markup, and to transform presentation markup used for style into style
sheets. [Priority 3]
- No. It is possible to do some transformations,
but important ones such as converting presentation markup to style
sheets is not supported.
Checkpoints:
- 5.1 Ensure that functionality
related to accessible
authoring practices is naturally integrated into the overall look and
feel of the tool. [Priority 2]
- Yes.
- 5.2 Ensure that accessible
authoring practices supporting Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
[WCAG10] Priority 1 checkpoints are
among the most obvious and easily initiated by the author. [Priority 2]
- No. Some functionalities are difficult to find
- for example adding text equivalents to SVG elements.
Checkpoints:
- 6.1 Document all features that
promote the production of accessible content. [Priority 1]
- Yes
- 6.2 Ensure that creating
accessible content is a naturally integrated part of the documentation,
including examples. [Priority 2]
- Yes
- 6.3 In a dedicated
section, document all features of the tool that promote the production of
accessible content. [Priority 3]
- Yes
Checkpoints:
- 7.1 Use all applicable
operating system and accessibility standards and conventions (Priority 1
for standards and conventions that are essential to accessibility; Priority
2 for those that are important to accessibility; Priority 3 for those that
are beneficial to accessibility).
- No. The documentation of Amaya probably meets WCAG double-A, and many
functions can be performed with a keyboard, but not all. Amaya does not
work well in providing access through accesssibility APIs.
- 7.2 Allow the author to change the
presentation within editing
views without affecting the document markup. [Priority 1]
- Yes. Amaya allows the author to edit the document applying a user
style sheet, which is not published.
- 7.3 Allow the author to edit all properties
of each element and
object in an accessible fashion. [Priority 1]
- Yes. It is possible to edit all the possible
attributes of all elements.
- 7.4 Ensure that the editing
view allows navigation via the structure of the document in an
accessible fashion. [Priority 1]
- Yes. Amaya provides several options for
navigating the structure of a document, including via a table of
contents generated automatically for HTML documents.
- 7.5 Enable editing of the structure of
the document in an accessible fashion. [Priority 2]
- Yes.
- 7.6 Allow the author to search within editing
views. [Priority 2]
- Yes
