[Tore Johnny Bråtveit]

Hello.

 

I have now been using Simple Catch Pro on one of my websites for some time. Generally I am very pleased with the theme, but I have noticed some theme behaviour and issues I would be very glad to see changed. 🙂

 

I have a more or less complete Norwegian translation of the theme. I have also edited the search box text strings to fit my needs. However, “enter keyword” is not among the transaltable strings in the theme, and it looks a bit too silly to have this short string still in English while the rest of the page is all in Norwegian.

 

The menu items in the horizontal menu are all clickable when visiting one of the pages. The visited page should preferrably not be clickable, since the user is already there.

 

The heading (h1) is made as a link when the user is on a subpage. This seems a little strange.

 

Both logo and site name are links. This means two links instead of one, which looks a bit unnecessary and confusing.

 

The tagline has been coded as an h2. Why? The tagline has no use for a heading, which only would be confusing.

 

Both logo and name are coded as H1. The first heading of a page should be the first heading of the content, both from a SEO and accessibility point of view, and coded as h1.

 

The “skip-link” which brings the user to the start of the main content should preferrably be some of the very first the user meets when opening the page with a screen reader. Like it is now, a screen reader user will have to browse through logo, name, tagline and search box. Maybe the skip-link could be placed in a better way visually.

 

My website can be found at http://www.saf-org.no – which is the official website of a small Norwegian organization of visually-impaired academics.

 

Keep up the good work!

 

Best regards,

 

Tore Johnny Bråtveit

[Sakin]

@TJBraatveit: Ok I will try to answer your long query as far as possible.

1) For Search Text “enter keyword” that you can change it through “Appearance => Theme Options => Theme Settings => Search Text Settings”.

2) For the menu item. We are using Custom Menu feature of WordPress itself. So, this thing if you don’t like it then maybe report to WordPress Core. But I think the menu should be made clickable as sometime, people might use page breaks and page numbers. I think this is just your own opinion.

3) I don’t get this what you mean. Also I would like to tell you that is proper planed and maintained theme. Also we have carefully drafted all the H1 tags.

4) Yes, we need to make both the logo and the Site Name link as sometime, people only keep logo without the site name and vice verse.

5) I don’t understand why tagline shoudn’t be coded as H2.

6) Yes we are in the process of modifying this soon.

7) We will think about this.

[Tore Johnny Bråtveit]

Hello, and thank you for your reply.

 

Two things I would like to comment a little further:

 

I haven’t been precise enough in my description about the not translated string related to the search box. Therefore:

I have done the changes I want regarding the text for the search field and the search button in the theme settings. However, (as I read it) right above the search box it still says “Type keyword” (not “Enter keyword” as I mistakenly wrote). The following is the start of the front page, as presented by the screen reader software:

 

Synshemmede Akademikere – SAF | Fremmer likestilling av synshemmede akademikere

Synshemmede Akademikere – SAF H1
Fremmer likestilling av synshemmede akademikere H2
Type Keyword

 

Then follows the search box with the text in Norwegian as entered in the theme settings by me. So, maybe this “Type keyword” message is not meant to be visible at all, or if it is, it should preferrably be possible to translate among the other translatable strings in the theme.

 

Concerning my comment about the h2 tag on the website tagline: I do not see the point to make this a heading, because it has no value for navigation. When I use the “list headings” feature in the screen reader, I do that to be able to navigate quickly to a given heading on the page where I want to set focus there to begin reading the content related to that heading. The tagline has no content related to it, except the tagline text itself, and is therefore rather worthless as a heading.

 

In most cases I complain about headings that are not properly programmed as heading. This time I find myself complaining on a heading thet I think should not be a heading – for a change. 🙂

 

But as I say; I like the theme, and it generally does a great job for my website.

 

Best regards,

Tore Johnny

[Tore Johnny Bråtveit]

Hello,

 

I feel my initial questions need some more explanations. I also have a couple of comments to your response.

 

Universal design has seen a growing focus in the Scandinavian countries during the recent years. Web accessibility is not an exception. As the responsible person for running the website for SAF – which is a small non-profit organization for blind and partially sighted people with higher education – my project is to upgrade our website so that it stand out as a fully accessible, universally designed website, usable for everyone.

 

We who are working with our website landed on Simple Catch Pro as our theme of choice, since it in almost every aspect fulfills our needs. My first message contained a list of the relatively few details we would like to see changed, so that the theme would work even better for us.

 

To your responses 4 and 5, i have further comments:

 
4) Yes, we need to make both the logo and the Site Name link as
sometime, people only keep logo without the site name and vice verse.

My comment: Yes it is good that you can either or. However the objects could
still be the same link. According to Accessability reasons it is very
important to reduce unnecessary links. And several links aiming for the
same goal is considered unnecessary.

5) I don’t understand why tagline shoudn’t be coded as H2.

My comment: Headings should be used to structure content. A H1-heading has content
underneath, a H2-heading has content underneath and so on. For
accessibility reasons, a user using a screen reader are jumping between
the headings to navigate between the content. Headings used in the wrong
way will therefore mislead users. The tagline is no heading and has no
content underneath.
Something that I haven’t commented on until now, but which confuses me a bit, it the main page heading. Why is that heading made as a link? Even though people use site navigation tools like WP-PageNavi, they should be able to click on the page number they want to go to, so I do not see the reason why the main heading should be a link. Could you please explain this? It is also quite unusual, as far as I have seen, since most WordPress themes do not use this. Is there a way that I easily can remove the link from the main page heading?

 

Best regards,

 

Tore Johnny

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