Comments on: Review – Accessibility Kit for SharePoint – Half Finished Product?

By: JW

JW — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:58:27 +0000

Adam, thanks for the review and Michael, I might be looking into your unofficial AKS. What a frustrating experience! Couldn’t install the (free) AKS 2 trimmed control that is needed to accomplish XHTML conformance nor the publishing token that is needed to run the HCCE engine. Found out that there is a problem trying to install more than one adapter as supplied in the kit. I came away with a real feeling of bait and switch. The AKS 2 is the bait and if/when it can’t be installed the switch to their commercial offerings (not free) is the solution.

By: Adam Toth

Adam Toth — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:04:27 +0000

Thanks for your efforts, it looks very promising. I don’t know the accessibility story yet for SharePoint 2010, but I am starting to go through the videos from SPC 09 now. I have a feeling a lot will need to change, and an entirely different AKS will need to be created.

By: Michael Flanakin

Michael Flanakin — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:05:52 +0000

I really appreciate you taking the time to write this up. It gave me some very good insight before I dug too much into what HiSoftware has. Unfortunately, I’m somewhat stuck with AKS for the time being. With that said, I’ve taken what was in AKS 2.0 and created a new, unaffiliated project on Codeplex. If you or anyone else are interested, please check out the [unofficial] Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (uAKS) @ http://aks.codeplex.com. I’m working on cleaning up all of the issues you mentioned, but could definitely use some help. I think uAKS 0.3 will be something people will actually get some real value out of, but have some ideas for 3 additional releases that seem to be needed.

By: Paul C

Paul C — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:16:24 +0000

Great post, couldn’t agree more. What a total shambles. Not only does this shoddy kit reflect poorly on HiSoftware but it reflects even worse on Microsoft who clearly are not even pretending to care about accessibility in SharePoint. This is a real stumbling block at my workplace where we are having problems getting MOSS implemented because of poor readability (for a few colleagues who are descended from Badgers).

By: Lee Wilson

Lee Wilson — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:11:13 +0000

I googled the symptoms of the frustration I was having and found your blog. It’s a comfort to know I am not alone, the product is rubbish, and I am not going mad. Thanks!

By: Beryl

Beryl — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:32:41 +0000

How long did it take you to write this blog.

By: Andy Burns

Andy Burns — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:57:31 +0000

Thanks for the review. The AKS is something that has come up a few times, but so far we’ve not had cause to use.

It’s a real shame, as the idea (particularly for collaboration sites) seems a good one – and Microsoft have basically ignored accessibility in SharePoint 2007. Here in the UK, though, it’s important for Government work.

Making fonts relative *is* going to take ages of fiddling, but it is something that would need to be done. It’s harsh, but that’s just a cost that you’d need to bear.

Weird that you have to publish the master pages/styles before SPD can see them. They ought to be in the virtual file system. Were you using SPD and IE as different users?

Oh, and FYI, Telerik’s RadEditor is WCAG ‘A’ compliant, apparently – http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-classic/editor/Examples/AccessibilityCompliance/DefaultCS.aspx . aRTE is ‘ARIA’ compliant, which isn’t a standard that I’ve heard about. Our customers always talk about WCAG compliance.

By: Richard Walsh

Richard Walsh — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 09:21:40 +0000

Adam,

Couldn’t agree more with your review. I am looking at the AKS v2 with a view to implement it on a client site, and I can’t believe how shoddy it is! I think though that it’s focus, if you were to use it at all, should be for public facing internet sites, and not collaboration portals.

That being said, I anticipate having to write my own control adapters to get it to work correctly (for example a web part zone adapter that works properly). I also think the master pages they supply don’t do enough in producing clean XHTML markup (still tables everywhere), so I will have to produce my own there too

By: Adam Toth

Adam Toth — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:06:53 +0000

Good points “Concerned”. I didn’t even try the aRTE. I figured why bother, when you can use the Telerik RTE that is probably much more accessible.

By: Concerned

Concerned — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:09:14 +0000

Adam, thanks for taking the time to write this up.
I don’t personally think that HiSoft have a solid understanding of accessbility, their aRTE shipped with an inaccessible PDF instruction manual, which meant even if their editor was accessible, people who don’t have vision couldn’t read how to use it.

Looking to the HiSoft site is hard work as their own pages don’t contain any headings and break the very basics of accessibility guidlines…try it yourself:

Go to:
http://www.hisoftware.com/products/CS_Accessibility.html

View source on the page

Do a ‘Find’ for H1 , H2, H3

HiSoft need to do some more work and understand what acessibility really means.