[Xerte] Wiki

Wed Apr 29 14:02:12 BST 2009

And in addition, I contacted a blind admin of Wikipedia for his thoughts on
it:  His response is here:

"Hi Mark,

MediaWiki is on the whole very accessible for screen reader users, as long
as the pages are laid out sensibly (i.e. with headings separating each
section). The biggest problem I can think of is the position of the section
edit buttons; since they're placed before the section title in the HTML, a
screen reader will read a section as "edit <sectionname>". I have a script
in my monobook.js file, which moves them to a better location for screen
readers, which you can copy to your Monobook.js file for all users. If you
need to turn CAPTCHAs on for account creation, make sure they're accessible
to all users. Reading diffs can be tricky for screen reader users; I've
found that the best way for me to read a complex diff is to go into the HTML
source code and search for class names like "diffchange". Apart from that, I
can't think of anything else. I've been using Wikipedia for quite a while
now so it's second-nature to me, so I could have missed some things. Also, I
only have experience with using JAWS for Windows with MediaWiki, so I'm not
sure how well other screen readers would handle it."

I'll look at the issue he mentioned to see if I can solve it (edit buttons),
but on the whole I think we could hold our head up high on the accessibility
front for people using JAWS at least.

Mark

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Alistair McNaught
Sent: 29 April 2009 09:30
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Wiki

Useful info Mark - many thanks.

I can look into this but not able to for a couple of days..

That still leaves the issues about audience and trusted contributors to be
considered..

A

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Mark Tomlinson
Sent: 29 April 2009 09:05
To: 'Xerte discussion list'
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Wiki

Apparently Mediawiki is :  "almost accessible for blind users"

http://blind.wikia.com/wiki/Mediawiki_and_Accessibility

The main issue I believe centres around the use of Captcha.  The one I
integrated does not use the visual verification method, but asks the user to
solve a simple maths problem.  I would assume that a screen reader could
read this, but I have not tested it.

Mark

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Alistair McNaught
Sent: 28 April 2009 21:09
To: Julian Tenney; ronm at mitchellmedia.co.uk; Xerte discussion list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Wiki

Hi all

Just catching up with this thread. 

I agree that a collaborative area for creating support materials is a great
idea but I think we ought to exercise some caution before making any single
place the centre of the universe J

My main concerns are

1)      Vandalism /spamming etc. We love Xerte but if I was a commercial
developer making a tidy income from selling overpriced underfeatured
software I might not love the threat Xerte provided to my income. I suggest
that some sort of 'trusted status' should be applied for access to the main
support materials.

2)      Horses for courses - MediaWiki is fine and dandy for coders but if
we wanted to set up an area where teaching practitioners could share ideas,
applications, examples, simple questions etc we'd need a much simpler
system. I'm an experienced Tiddlywiki user but looking at the help pages on
formatting and conventions made me think. I can't be bothered. I haven't got
time to remember some obscure code convention for placing an image on the
page or italicising text.

3)      Accessibility - it would be embarrassing if the much vaunted (by us
at any rate) accessibility features of Xerte were documented on an
inaccessible wiki page. I've not yet had a chance to get a screenreader user
to test the page but I certainly wouldn't want to push this out before
having done so. There are 14 tests for assessing the accessibility of web2
services (see www.web2access.org.uk) and I'd want to be sure we could meet
most of them before putting my name to a Xerte centre of the universe.

Certainly the wiki could be invaluable at putting together the
specifications for training and support materials - and it may well be
appropriate for hosting the materials themselves but I think there needs to
be rather more debate on the matter and this might be the sort of thing that
is thrashed out in relation to the XPERT project meeting in May.

Alistair

From: Julian Tenney [mailto:Julian.Tenney at nottingham.ac.uk] 
Sent: 28 April 2009 12:22
To: ronm at mitchellmedia.co.uk; Alistair McNaught
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Wiki

I think we should concentrate on making wiki.xerte.net the centre of the
known universe. We need all the documentation - from us, from the xpert
project, from other contributers to live in one place where it can easily be
updated and maintained. 

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of RonM
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 12:11 PM
To: 'Xerte discussion list'
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Wiki

Apologies if this comes through twice but I sent this at 10.40 this morning
and it hasn't appeared on the list yet. L

Hi Julian

Apologies for not responding sooner - was delivering Toolkits training all
day yesterday.

When we were discussing the use of a wiki off-list recently I was thinking
that would be for developing the spec for the support material rather than
the actual support material. But as has been suggested subsequently an
installation of MediaWiki might do both
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki as an example a lot of the moodle
documentation is provided via MediaWiki http://docs.moodle.org/en/Main_Page 

Ron

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Patrick Lockley
Sent: 28 April 2009 10:49
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Wiki

I did quite a bit on www.installationwiki.org re toolkits guidance, and then
some spammer wrecked it and all my work got deleted.

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Mark Tomlinson
Sent: 28 April 2009 10:49
To: 'Xerte discussion list'
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Wiki

I'll see what I can do..

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Patrick Lockley
Sent: 28 April 2009 10:38
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Wiki

I made an account as well, but my inner pedant says Captcha?

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Mark Tomlinson
Sent: 28 April 2009 09:44
To: 'Xerte discussion list'
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Wiki

Jules

I think people can simply create their own accounts??

Anyone an expert on media wiki on the list??

Mark

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: 27 April 2009 21:25
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Wiki

I think there needs to be documentation for people developing the software,
and documentation for people using the software. It could be in the same
place, or in different places as the two groups will have quite different
requirements. Googlecode happened to have a convenient wiki which is what
Pat has started to use today. Sourceforge have also just approved my project
request, so now is a good time for us to decide google code or sourceforge
once and for all. I might set up a project on soirceforge anyway adn then we
can vote or something. You can see the google code pages already. I like the
simplicity a lot - it fits well with our FWS design principles for the
software itself.

Mark - how would we add users to the wiki you set up? That (or something
similar) should probably host the bulk of the user docs, and be the one
place for info on using Xerte in its various forms. I would love it if
someone were to step forward and take on managing that space.

We have several people primed to start creating documentation and I'm keen
it doesn't become fragmented. 

Alistair and Ron: would a wiki meet your needs? wiki.xerte.net in
particular. 

J

  _____  

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk on behalf of Patrick Lockley
Sent: Mon 27/04/2009 19:10
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Wiki

10 repositories.

1 for those that speak binary, 1 for those that don't - or grom my take so
far on the installs of XOT, we have the sysadmin types who would want the
scope to do whatever they wanted, and the dabblers who want something a
little more light.

  _____  

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk on behalf of Dave Burnett
Sent: Mon 27/04/2009 17:22
To: Xerte list
Subject: RE: [Xerte] Wiki

Totally your call, but I'm not sure about the facility of splitting
locations...

> Subject: RE: [Xerte] Wiki
> Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:09:40 +0100
> From: Patrick.Lockley at nottingham.ac.uk
> To: xerte at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
> 
> Can do both - I see the google one as the trouble shooter
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
> [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Mark
> Tomlinson
> Sent: 27 April 2009 17:06
> To: 'Xerte discussion list'
> Subject: RE: [Xerte] Wiki
> 
> I spoke to Julian about this a while back and I did set one up then on:
> 
> http://wiki.xerte.net
> 
> I never got round to publicising it though :-(
> 
> Mark
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
> [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Patrick
> Lockley
> Sent: 27 April 2009 17:01
> To: Xerte discussion list
> Subject: [Xerte] Wiki
> 
> http://code.google.com/p/xerte/w/list
> 
> Your wish is our command, if your wishes are based primarily on wikis
> that is :)
> 
> Patrick Lockley
> IS Learning Team
> King's Meadow Campus
> Tel: 0115 84 68882
> 
> My Page on Community - http://webapps.nottingham.ac.uk/elgg/cczpl
> _______________________________________________
> Xerte mailing list
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