A few accessibility points for MX b3143

[freddie]

From user mdlawler requesting latest thoughts on the following accessibility points:

1. The percentage for the moon phase. I suggested creating a file when the image is displayed and then just using this file for the percentage.
2. Displaying the noaa reports in a grid/table. Note that I just want to change how they are displayed not the actual text files. Since I'm blind perhaps I don't understand some visual aspect to this, but as long as the text files don't change how does it cause any backward compatibility issues to parse them and display them in a table/grid. As I said try reading them with Narrator and then read the main Cumulusmx display for temp/rain/wind and you'll immediately see my problem.

[mcrossley]

OK...

1. I still have this on the todo list, I'll probably add the percent as alt text to the image so screen readers will pick it up.

2. Is a big area. It would mean either...
a. Writing new routines in CMX to output the NOAA reports as HTML rather than text. This would be optional as the text file is the standard. Writing that and getting everything formatted nicely etc. would be quite a big job.
b. Write a browser client-side text file parser for the existing reports to convert them on the fly to HTML. Again, writing that and getting everything formatted nicely etc. would be quite a big job.

Summary, item 1 will be done soon, item 2 would be a low priority item for the time being.

[freddie]

Thanks Mark, I'll pass that on.

[mcrossley]

Could you ask if he wants the percent as an absolute value, i.e. 0% to 100%. Or as a full range that indicates waxing/waning i.e. -100% to 100%

Or would the Moon age into the current lunation be better?

[freddie]

Could you ask if he wants the percent as an absolute value, i.e. 0% to 100%. Or as a full range that indicates waxing/waning i.e. -100% to 100%

Or would the Moon age into the current lunation be better?

Michael says that an absolute percentage is the way to go. I believe the waxing/waning bit is elsewhere on the page.

2. Is a big area. It would mean either...
a. Writing new routines in CMX to output the NOAA reports as HTML rather than text. This would be optional as the text file is the standard. Writing that and getting everything formatted nicely etc. would be quite a big job.
b. Write a browser client-side text file parser for the existing reports to convert them on the fly to HTML. Again, writing that and getting everything formatted nicely etc. would be quite a big job.

Summary, item 1 will be done soon, item 2 would be a low priority item for the time being.

Michael says this about item 2:

if you would like to manually code a monthly file into html to make sure that it would be readable I'd be willing to test that, meaning that you could take a single month text file, preferably one of mine since I kind of know what to expect from my data, manually put it into html and then put it up somewhere and I could attempt to read it and we could tweak it so that if you eventually automate this we'll have a working prototype to compare to.