View source for Wikipedia:WikiProject Accessibility/Top priority issues with templates

{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Accessibility/Breadcrumb|[[Wikipedia:WikiProject Accessibility/Top priority issues with templates|Template priorities]]}}
{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Accessibility/Navigation menu|templates}}

Here is a small list of long awaited key improvements to make, often important for several aspects of [[Web engineering#Web Quality Attributes Disciplines|web quality]].

As major changes in templates are often long and tedious to make (and also to gather consensus on the said changes), we should aim to maximize the value of these changes, and aim for quality in a broad way. Improving care of accessibility, usability, semantics, and front-end web speed altogether when possible. Back-end template performance should also be taken into account when relevant.<ref group="note">Extremely large templates - especially when they have multiple levels of inclusions (transclusion depth) - lengthen strongly the time necessary for the servers to prepare an uncached page, up to 10 - 20 seconds, or more. Since the current revision of articles are cached, most of the time the templates doesn't have an influence at all. But when users have specific account configurations, browse archived pages or request uncached pages, large templates are an important burden on the servers. We shouldn't focus too much on performance, but we shouldn't play dumb either: many templates have obvious and detrimental performance issues.</ref>

== Most widely used templates==

We should make a list of the 200 most widely used templates and review them carefully, monitor their changes, etc. See [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Accessibility/Most widely used templates]].

== Table templates ==

Please help expand this list.
To be reviewed
*[[:Category:Military infobox templates]]

=== Easy to fix templates ===

*{{strong|Mostly done}}. [[Template:Increase]], [[Template:Steady]] and [[Template:Decrease]], now use an icon with alt text. [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:DecreasePositive&diff=395363313&oldid=392953028 Template:DecreasePositive] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:IncreaseNegative&diff=395363677&oldid=392974005 Template:IncreaseNegative] are fixed too. Contrast could eventually be improved.

==== Infobox ====
Without changing the layout nor making big changes:
* {{done}} [[Template:Infobox/row]] - included in more than 782589 articles. With this most of the job is done, [[Template:Infobox]] is awesome and {{em|must}} be used
**"font-size:88%": I will definitely try my hardest to have the default text size in [[Template:Infobox]] set back to default. Small font size are hard to read, and thus reduce usability. This was proved by scientific reading studies, small text size can lengthen the reading rate by 1.5 (for example, a text that you could read in 20 seconds in normal size (12 points) could take you 30 seconds in smaller size (10 points). See [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability/Readability guidelines]]
* {{done}} [[Template:Infobox artist discography]] - but very lacking from a design point of view

===== Remaining Infobox that needs to be converted to Template:Infobox =====

* [[Template:Infobox ship characteristics]]
* [[User:Matthew25187/Infobox tram network]], [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29&curid=3252662&diff=393961025&oldid=393952821 review]
* and many more, please help find them.

==== Templates-based tables ====
*{{done}} [[Template:VG series reviews]] : [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:VG_series_reviews&diff=395353755&oldid=336784246 most important fix is done], [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:VG_series_reviews&diff=prev&oldid=397369390 improved with scope="row" and plainrowheaders]
*{{done}} [[Template:Pinyintable]], [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Pinyintable&diff=prev&oldid=397368737 done]
*{{done}} [[Template:US DemogTable]], [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:US_DemogTable&diff=418638778&oldid=296118699 fixed in march 2011]
*[[Template:Infobox US university ranking]], was [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AInfobox_US_university_ranking&action=historysubmit&diff=397191637&oldid=385335555 fixed in 2010], but since it was [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Infobox_US_university_ranking&diff=next&oldid=454309670 massively deteriorated in 2011].

==== Citation templates ====
*[[Template:Quote box]]: should use the blockquote tag. DIVs within the textual content should be replaced by SPANs (the enclosing paragraph P can then be generated correctly by MediaWiki).

=== Harder to fix ===

*[[Template:Infobox country]]
*[[Template:Infobox settlement]]

==== Template-based tables ====
*{{t|VGtitle}}
*{{t|MedalTop}}
*[[Template:VG requirements]]
*[[Template:Video game reviews]]
*[[Template:Video game titles]]
*{{t|AchievementTable}}
*[[Template:PersonalRecords]], {{t|PersonalRecordsTop}} and {{t|PersonalRecordsSport}} [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:PersonalRecordsSport&diff=395423251&oldid=112257737 partially fixed]
*[[Template:Infobox weather]]
*[[Template:MIinttop]] (see [[M-28 (Michigan highway)]])
*[[Template:Jctint]] and all subordinate templates such as [[Template:CAint]]. These only mark the mile column cells as row headings. The state, county, and location columns would best be rendered as rowgroup headings and individual cells would best render with the header attribute added. This would best be accomplished at the code level without requiring re-editing of pages using that template. 
*[[Template:Year3]]
*[[Emiel Puttemans]] and the like
*{{t|Fieldhockeybox}}
*[[Template:Largest cities of Italy]]
*[[List of accolades received by Precious]]
*[[Template:Track listing]], inline colors (use CSS instead for customization and optimization), needs structure improvements

==== Others ====
*[[Template:Image label]]
*[[Template:Bar box]]
*[[Template:Bigbold]]
*[[Template:Cladogram]]
*[[Template:Cquote]]

== Timelines ==

=== Replacement by tables ===
*[[Template:Georgia, Largest cities, 2009 Census -- Bar Graph]], March 2011

Notes: 
*[[Template:Bar graph]] has potential to be widely used, and replace several timelines;
* The method used at the French template [[:fr:Modèle:Pyramide des âges|{{lang|fr|Modèle:Pyramide des âges}}]] may prove to be useful.

== Headers templates ==
*[[Template:Documentation/preload]], [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Documentation/preload&diff=prev&oldid=418640095 fixed in march 2011]

==Templates that can easily be misused==
Usage of these templates should be checked on a regular basis.
*[[:Category:Hidden text templates]]
*[[:Category:Text color templates]]

== Cross-wiki ban of HiddenStructure ==
See [[Wikipedia:HiddenStructure]]. The hiddenstructure class was removed from skins in [[bugzilla:17009]]. It may remain in several wikis' local common.css.
*[http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spezial:Suche&redirs=1&search=hiddenstructure&fulltext=Search&ns10=1&title=Spezial:Suche&advanced=1&fulltext=Advanced+search Some uses remain at de.wiki], about 14 templates.
*[http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css&diff=72221250&oldid=71921365 Problem solved at fr.wiki], since November 2011.

== Low priority improvements ==
=== Improvements to collapsible menus ===

Another script should be made from scratch. [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Accessibility/Navigation menu]] will serve as the experimental field for this job. The code is almost ready at [[User:Dodoïste/navmenu.css]] and [[User:Dodoïste/navmenu.js]].

Accessibility-wise, this new script should allow for menus made of lists, the sub-menu headers being part of the list (which is currently impossible). And the link or button used to show/hide the menu should be able to be inserted inside a li element, along with its corresponding header. Alternatively, the same thing can be done with the p element. Another alternative is to provide a meaningful title to the link show/hide, in order to made it explicit in context. And neither MediaWiki nor the collapsible script allow to fix this issue, in the current implementation of the script. Related WCAG 2 guidelines:
#[http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H30.html H30: Providing link text that describes the purpose of a link for anchor elements] and [http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/G91.html G91: Providing link text that describes the purpose of a link]
#[http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H25.html H25: Providing a title using the title element]
#[http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H33.html H33: Supplementing link text with the title attribute]
#[http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/F63.html F63: Failure of Success Criterion 2.4.4 due to providing link context only in content that is not related to the link]

Usability-wise it should be done with JQuery to make pretty animations, and CSS for button [[affordance]]. It implies that the JQuery library should be deployed to all skins, this is planned by the Usability Initiative team.

== Notes ==

{{reflist|group=note}}

[[Category:WikiProject Accessibility|Template priorities]]