Hi Jessica: This will be a somewhat longer response to your question and I hope it's helpful. Apologies in advance if it's not as comprehensive as I would like to make it, i.e. with relevant links for good additional info, etc., etc.
My first comment is an observation about getting help from sighted colleagues. Frankly, they often don't know how to talk to us blind folks. That's true in digital environs just as it is in physical environs. Pointing this out takes me to my first response to you about certain HTML elements, specifically the div element. It's just a container. You can deploy it to contain anything you want, actually. The sighted world loves it for the look and feel opportunities it provides. Other HTML elements are clearly structural, e.g. the list elements you were pointed to in this thread. Yes, we blind folks tend to love the more structural elements simply because we benefit from clearly organized and well marked up content. I suppose most of us wish we saw that more often, but I digress. The take-away so far is the notion of containers. The div element isn't the only one, but it's widely used, so understanding that it's just a bucket is important, imo. Next I want to share an architectural overview with you. In my understanding there are three important code streams in most web content as follows: 1.) HTML This is the structural content organizing code defined by the WHAT Working Group (and the World Wide Web Consortium). The "source of truth" for HTML is this publication from 10 years ago: https://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-html5-20141028/ More useful to you is the Mozilla Developer Network documentation of HTML 5 and how to use the various HTML 5 elements. Over the years I've found that power HTML developers refer to the Mozilla Developer Network documentation pages when discussing pros and cons of particular HTML codeing approaches. The MDN is here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/ There's lots of great help there including "Getting Started" guidance. There's also a Wikipedia page for MDN you might want to visit to understand the HTML world we now live in a bit better by way of acquiring a contextual understanding of the coding work you've set out to learn. Note that MDN also provides guidance on the following architectural coding streams, so it really is a great one-stop source of info for you! 2.) CSS In the classical understanding of web content organization, and still the very much preferred approach for well developed web content, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is the code layer responsible for the look and feel of web content. CSS remains actively in development. As a blind coder you will at least want to understand the basics of CSS, but it's nuances are likely something you'll leave to sighted colleagues. The "source of truth" for CSS is a large corpus of specifications from the W3C's CSS Working Group whose home page is here: https://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/specs.en.html And, a more user-friendly introduction to the CSS world is provided here: https://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Overview.en.html On a personal note let me briefly digress to comment on how I recently used CSS on one of my consulting contracts. I was developing a document with my contractor that included quotations from documents published online. However, my colleagues weren't always sufficiently careful making edits to our jointly developed document. So, I colorized all content contained in the HTML <Q> tag dark red with the comment that we could quote more, or we could quote less in our document; but, we could not change what the published document we were quoting from actually said! 3.) Javascript While there are perfectly good HTML elements for interactivity in web content, the interactive layer of web content is usually accomplished by javascript, often denoted simply as "js." There isn't a source of truth I know of for you regarding javascript. However, there's plenty good guidance about using js in more accessible friendly ways on the web. Here's such an article from the MDN that sums all this up: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Accessibility/CSS_and_JavaScript Lastly, let me simply comment that you don't need to change your operating system to learn HTML, CSS and even javascript. While I would tend to agree that you're likely to end up using Linux if you become a power web content developer, that day need not be today. You've sufficiently complexity in your world just now to grapple with. Let me add only that the point to all that is the power of the command line as opposed to the point and click graphical environment. Windows and MacOS provide their own p[owerful command line environments, especially most recent versions of Microsoft's Power Shell. Also, you can comfortably run Linux on a Windows computer using the Microsoft provided Web Subsystem for Linux (WSL). On a Mac you'll likely want to establish a virtual machine using VMware Fusion, though many people on this list are perfectly comfortable with the Apple Terminal and don't see a need for a virtual command line environment. You will, though, want good tooling on your end. Currently, vscode (or vscodium on Linux) seems to be the preferred power user's application of choice for web content development. You'll especially also want to become comfortable with linting and debugging tools like validatornu (which checks the "validity" of your HTML). hth!! Janina Jessica Moss writes: > I???m attempting to proceed further in learning HTML, and have been having > one of my coworkers help when he???s had some spare time. However, with him > having completely usable vision, and trying to explain to me how certain > portions of this work, divs and classes being a big thing, that???s where > this becomes interesting, and makes me wonder how often will I use these, and > should I just leave styling type elements such as these to someone who has > more knowledge and can actually see where they need to go. > He???s told me that it???s like putting items into a folder when dealing > with html divs/classes, but that???s as far as I???ve gotten, considering the > fact that while I understand the concept of having a physical folder, where > you???d have deviders separating your homework assignments from your tests > and quizzes for example, how would I style an existing template I???ve > already started building in that same manner, without being able to see it, > and know that I???ve done it correctly? > > -- > The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries > list. > > If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if > you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or > moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. > > Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor. You can reach mark at: > mk...@ucla.edu and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at > caraqu...@caraquinn.com > > The archives for this list can be searched at: > http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries@googlegroups.com/ > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/macvisionaries/0FFD3A6A-444D-495D-BB56-C06B0C46342D%40gmail.com. -- Janina Sajka (she/her/hers) Accessibility Consultant https://linkedin.com/in/jsajka The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Co-Chair, Accessible Platform Architectures http://www.w3.org/wai/apa Linux Foundation Fellow https://www.linuxfoundation.org/board-of-directors-2/ -- The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor. You can reach mark at: mk...@ucla.edu and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at caraqu...@caraquinn.com The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries@googlegroups.com/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/macvisionaries/ZlIx4jeLt5Zy7HLM%40rednote.net.
