I, as yet, have no opinion on whether a website 'overlay' is a god idea or not;
I've been away for a week or so and I've just read through this thread. I would
caution against reinventing the wheel, though - accessibility has been a known issue on
Wikipedia for many years, and some considerable effort has gone into making things more
accessible.
"Wikis aren't accessible" is one of those things people say, but nobody has
yet provided anything concrete to explain that position. I'm the first to admit that
the wiki format can't do everything, and that (contrary to the opinions of some of the
format's more passionate advocates) it has its drawbacks, but nobody in his thread has
explained what those drawbacks are in terms of accessibility. I've been using wikis
for years, so I readily admit that I can't remember what it feels like for a
first-time user. I'd really like to know if this is just one of those things that
people say (in which case we can try to dispel an urban myth) or whether there is
something about wikis tat makes them inherently inaccessible for readers.
As an aside, the rationale of the proposed 'overlay' is being couched in terms of
accessibility, but the changes seem to be focused more on aesthetics, so I'm curious
what the problem is that this 'overlay' would solve, and how it would solve it. I
don't think it's a terrible idea by any stretch, but I'd like to see some
informed discussion about what we're trying to fix and the best way to do that.
Thanks,
Harry Mitchell
http://enwp.org/User:HJ
Phone: 024 7698 0977
Skype: harry_j_mitchell
On Thursday, 12 June 2014, 11:17, Stevie Benton <stevie.benton(a)wikimedia.org.uk>
wrote:
Some examples were discussed on the Wikimedia UK wiki a while back here
-
https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Talk:Accessibility_of_the_Wikimedia_websites
One of our trustees, Carol Campbell, put together a really good paper on this, including
some advice from the RNIB which we were given permission to use. I seem to remember that
rather than focusing on the issue of accessibility, there was more discussion about
whether we could use those elements of Carol's paper. It wasn't very productive,
to say the least.
On 11 June 2014 21:08, Andy Mabbett <andy(a)pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
On 10 June 2014 18:28, Stevie Benton <stevie.benton(a)wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
Our wiki, like pretty much any Media Wiki
installation I can think of, is
not very accessible
How so?
--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
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--
Stevie Benton
Head of External Relations
Wikimedia UK
+44 (0) 20 7065 0993 / +44 (0) 7803 505 173
@StevieBenton
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chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia
Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor
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