Beginner's Guide

As in beez 1.5 all those things that are necessary for the design of accessible templates are
implemented also in beez_20 and beez5. The most important are:
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Separation of content and layout
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Semantically logical structure
•
Anchors links
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Keyboard navigability
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Sufficient colour contrasts
Separation of Content and Layout
The first and most important rule for developers is the possible complete separation of content and
layout:
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Clean and pure HTML for the content
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No unnecessary layout tables
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Formatting exclusively with CSS
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A logical semantic structure
•
Anchor links
The linearisable issue of content and formatting via CSS only is one of the most important
conditions for convenient accessibility.
Only then assistive technology has the option to recycle the contents at will, while the visual
presentation can be completely ignored. The outsourcing of the presentation in style sheets give, for
example, visually impaired users, the possibility to define own style sheets in their browser and adapt that
the pages exactly fit his/her needs. A linear presentation of content and an adequate semantic structure
is particularly important for users of screen readers.
Screen readers grasp the content of a site from top to bottom, that means linear. The use of
extensive layout tables hinders linearisation.
Behind the term Semantic Web probably most of the people can imagine only very little. You
probably associate language lessons, but it also plays a special role in writing Web content. For example,
screen readers offer their users to jump from heading to heading or from list to list, to get a quick
overview of the overall document. If a Web document has no headers, this functionality is not available.
The formal structure of a web document should largely correspond to the content structure.
Depending on the Web project the choice of the corresponding heading hierarchy can be quite a
challenge.
Joomla! 2.5 - Beginner’s Guide
Monday, 30 January 2012! Page 204