Accessibility Issues with the LoCo Directory and Ubuntu Website

[Alejandra Obregon]

Hi Penelope

Thank you for your email. We really appreciate your input and  
constructive suggestions.

The accessibility issue is something we are aware of and working on at  
the moment. We have a patch on the current sites that addresses the  
gray background issue, and are testing at the moment. We have used the  
lighter background as per the rest of the site and this complies with  
W3C standards. I have attached a grab that shows how this will look.  
This is tied in to some other items we are updating on the sites and  
should be live in the next week or so. Your thoughts on this are  
welcome.

We are also aware that there are some browsers that cannot resize  
fonts set in pixels. We will be experimenting with this in our dev  
servers and can hopefully make an update soon. A change like this  
needs thorough testing to explore the impact on all areas of the site.  
I will keep you all posted on these developments. Examples of browser  
versions that have this problem would be really helpful for our tests.

Once these changes land we will update the web guidelines to specify  
this fully as well.

We really like the idea of a main point of contact from the  
accessibility team to discuss key issues with and make sure we are  
tackling things as they come up. As you observed our bug bandwidth is  
pretty full at the moment, we are trying to fix things as quickly and  
efficiently as we can. We will double check to make sure we are  
subscribed to all the projects mentioned.

Thanks again for your help.

Kind regards
Alejandra

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On 29 Nov 2010, at 14:48, Penelope Stowe wrote:

> Hiya,
>
> I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend.
>
> I've been talking to the developers of the LoCo Directory and the
> Ubuntu Website and they're very frustrated with the bugs and
> complaints about accessibility on the website, not because they don't
> want to do anything, but because they are not in charge of design
> issues, that is something the design team should be addressing and the
> design team is not subscribed to the LoCo Directory and Ubuntu Website
> bugs.
>
> Several things have come out of this conversation:
>
> 1) I've agreed to ask the accessibility team to stop filing bugs
> directly against the LoCo Directory and Ubuntu Website since it's not
> helping anything and just causing more frustration.
>
> 2) Michael Hall has created
> https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-website/light-a11y-theme as a place for
> accessibility related website/LoCo directory bugs to be logged. I hope
> and encourage the design team members who focus on the website design
> to subscribe to these bugs.
>
> 3) The other option is to use the Ayatana mailing list or e-mail the
> design team members directly, however, do remember to be polite and
> not overload the list or team. I would like to have one person on the
> accessibility team who is a point-of-contact for website issues to
> avoid mailbox flooding. I'd like volunteers, however, I think it would
> be best if the volunteer were to be in the UK or in a time zone close
> to GMT so that they have a better chance of being able to interact
> with the design team in real time if necessarily.
>
> 4) It's brought up a clear need for some communication with the design
> team on how to get the guidelines for website design to fit in with
> accessibility needs, since they so clearly don't at the moment. I know
> this makes it a complicated and long process, however, I think it's
> the best plan to get this issue fixed in the long term. Otherwise, the
> same discussions will come up on every bit of the Ubuntu website every
> time something changes and just be more and more frustrating for
> everyone.
>
> Please also remember in this process that the design team is made up
> of human beings. They are largely only available during work hours in
> the UK Monday-Friday so do not get impatient if there is no answer to
> your e-mails on weekends or evenings. They have a lot of work to do
> and we are only one part of that.
>
> I hope this can lead to some progress on the issues with the website
> as it is important for people's first impressions of accessibility in
> Ubuntu (since if they can't access the website, why would they think
> they could use the operating system?) and because it is very obviously
> an area that is causing a lot of frustration.
>
> Thanks,
> Penelope