Changes that were made to the Symanted.com site

It was apparent that some issues related to accessibility were addressed as this site, or at least this page, was put together. However, there were still a number of issues that needed to be addressed. The following changes are the ones I made to make the page more accessible:

First up was the obvious ALT text. I added appropriate ALT text for all images that were missing it - particularly the spacer.gif images (to which I gave empty ALT text). I also expanded one image's ALT text to include more information for non-sighted users (or those surfing without images).

The next major change was to modify the JavaScript which sent users directly to a new page when a selection is made from a dropdown list. I simply disabled that onChange event in the script, forcing the user to click the submit button (an image, in this case) to go to the new page. There was already a cgi to take care of this on Symantec's server. This allows users to make a mistake, or to use the arrow keys to move through the choices before being sent (unexpectedly) to a new page.

Those changes took care of all the Priority 1 issues, and some Priority 2 and 3 issues as well.

More changes that were made included modifying the Submit image to give it more contrast. It was a small white ">" symbol on a yellow background. I made the ">" black, so it is easier to see. It would be even better to remove the image and put a form button in its place.

I also removed proprietary code and deprecated tags, replacing them, where appropriate, with CSS. This should speed up rendering in some cases. The JavaScripts make it difficult to get the document to properly validate. Writing valid code is important so that accessibility software can render the page correctly, without worrying about proprietary code that it may not be able to parse correctly.