DreamWeaver 4 Accessibility Modifications

Important: This page has been moved to the archive because it is deemed out-of-date and may not be appropriate for all users. Please bear this in mind before reading on.

New dreamweaver modificationsThe following objects have been added or amended from existing DreamWeaver 4 objects to improve the accessibility of the code that they output. Jump to installation notes.

Please note that this page does not constitute a tutorial - it assumes that you already know a little bit about accessibility and are simply frustrated with having to hand-code some of the tags in Dreamweaver. However, there is a tutorial on this site if you do want to learn a little bit more about creating better accessible forms.

If you have requests for more additions, please contact us and we'll see what we can do.

Related link - Carrie Bickner's XHTML DreamWeaver modifications - we suggest you install these first, then install the accessibility enhanced modifications on this page.

What objects have been enhanced/added

  • Accessibility (new palette)
    • The acronym tag
      • <acronym title="title attribute">
        Insert Acronym tag dialogue
    • The abbreviation tag
      • <abbr title="title attribute">
  • Common
    • E-mail link
      • Adds a title attribute to the link - useful for providing extra information about who the recipient is
      • <a href="mailto:" title="title attribute"></a>
    • Table
      • <table ... summary="Summary attribute ">
        Table caption and summary box
      • Adds the invisible table summary attribute (useful for screenreaders). If no attribute is entered, the table is populated with summary="" - this is best practice, much like an empty alt attribute in an image.
        • For data tables, enter a suitable summary, e.g. <table summary="Average house prices for the western regions">
        • For layout tables, use an empty summary attribute, e.g. <table summary="">
      • Caption tag added - the caption element is rendered on screen above the header row.
  • Containers (new palette)
    • Div <div class="classname" id="idname"></div>
      Insert div tag dialogue
    • Paragraph <p class="classname" id="idname"></p>
    • Span <span class="classname" id="idname"></span>
  • Forms
    • The label tag is incredibly important for improving accessibility of a form
      • <label for="attribute"></label>
        Insert label tag

Installation notes

Unzip it and place the four folders (Accessibility, Common, Containers, Forms) in the Configuration > Objects, as shown below:

File location for modifications

Note: Be sure to back up your existing configuration > objects folder first, just in case you have difficulties or don't like the modifications.

These modifications have been tested only on DreamWeaver 4 - I have no idea how they will behave in MX, or if they even offer any advantages.