form accessibility screen readers visually impaired blind users sight problems sight problems hearing mobility cognitive impairments

Accessibility, usability

Visually impaired users, users with sight problems or mobility cognitive impairments: they all use the same internet as the others do, they only use screen readers or special navigation instead of the mouse and/or the keyboard. Building accessible websites, paying attention to usability slowly became a standard, so it wasn't a question if clonefish needs to be prepared to such requirements.

Let's see how clonefish supports accessibility/usability:

  • the label tags (form labels) are automatically generated for every single input: this way clicking on text around the input controls will focus on the input (text, textarea, select), select it (radio button) or change its state (checkbox). It's something that's been used by desktop applications for a long time - since HTML 4.01 it's a standard on the web too.
  • fieldset support: another HTML feature to group form elements together. It's not only a great visual guidance to users, but also helps screen reader users to understand your form much better.
  • XHTML support - XHTML basically is a stricter way to write HTML. Clonefish generates XHTML code, it means that it will not break your XHTML-compliant website while it still renders great even in XHTML-incapable browsers.
  • cross-browser JavaScript: clonefish generates cross-browser JavaScript tested in IE 5-6-7, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Pocket Internet Explorer, Opera for Windows Mobile Pocket PC. Due to the fallback methods used, client-side validation works fine even under Netscape Navigator 4.5 (released in 1998!). This versatility is not just for fun: it means, that virtually every JavaScript-supporting browser will understand the generated code (including not just PDAs, but even set-top boxes).
  • Set-top boxes, strict IT policies at companies/banks, special browsers and browser settings: all these can lead to missing/turned off JavaScript. Since clonefish uses exactly the same validation methods on the server side, you will never receive invalid data - just say good-bye to script kiddies and hackers trying to break your site or database through your forms!

Besides helping your users, you can also benefit from these features by simply quoting them when you're about to convince your clients and exceed you rivals - and even search engines will understand your pages better. All that without a single line of extra code. Isn't it what you were looking for?

In case you're interested in usability, accessibility, there's a lot to read at http://evolt.org/ia_usability!

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