Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of National Historic Landmarks in Michigan/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by Giants2008 23:08, 27 February 2012 [1].

List of National Historic Landmarks in Michigan (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Featured list candidates/List of National Historic Landmarks in Michigan/archive1

Nominator(s): Dana boomer (talk) 20:31, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've been working on the list over the past week or so and think that it is ready for a shot at FL. Because this is the first list of this sort that I've worked on, I've based it off of List of National Historic Landmarks in Indiana, which became a FL in 2010. Thanks in advance for any comments - I look forward to seeing them, Dana boomer (talk) 20:31, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from RexxS

Thanks for the nomination, Dana. Although I know almost nothing about Michigan, I found the list very interesting and the introduction well written. The statistics and the detailed map in the lead went a long way to establishing the context for me.

Standards have tightened, I think, over the last year or so, and FLC has become more sensitive to the issues surrounding accessibility, principally because of the fact that tables are prominent in most list articles. I'd like to make a few points that I feel would improve the list if they were addressed:

1. The use of colour – we should not be providing information through the use of colour alone. If you imagine that you were reading the article to a friend over the telephone, would they get the different meanings that are in Wikipedia:NRHP colors legend from the way the colours are used in this article? I can see that you added '†' to indicate 'Historic District', but there's no audible cue for 'Landmark'. This would make it awkward for anyone using a screen reader to distinguish the two categories used here. In addition, '†' is not accessible in the sense that many screen readers read it as '?'. The characters that can be typed from a standard keyboard are usually read accurately by screen readers, so I always recommend '#', '+', '*', as good choices. We have created templates for some of the common inaccessible characters like {{†}} and {{‡}}, which use an image plus user-definable alt text to make those keys much friendlier for screen readers. You might, for example, use {{†|alt=Historic District}} and {{‡|alt=Landmark}} throughout the table and key. This would produce a very similar visual appearance for the sighted, but a much more satisfactory experience for the blind.
2. We also need to be aware of the effect of colour contrast on viewers who may not have the same colour responses as the general population. The standard called 'Web Content Accessibilty Guidelines' (WCAG) gives us guidance on what colours we can use as background against a given text colour. There's a useful tool at http://snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html which shows that 'NHL color' (i.e. #87CEEB) and 'NHLD color' (i.e. #00CED1) are marginal for black text with the small small point size used, but the latter fails even the lower AA standard if the text is wikilinked (colour is #0645AD). I understand the desire to retain a project-wide colour scheme, but the scheme really needs lighter or less blue colours if they are going to be fully accessible. I'm not suggesting this is anything you can rectify individually (other than abandoning the NRHP scheme in favour of the default wikitable colours), but it doesn't reflect well on Wikipedia if examples of our very best work don't match up to world-wide standards for accessibility.
3. Data tables now have a recommendation in the Manual of Style that they should identify column and row headers where possible, and mark them up as headers with the relevant scope. So column headers should have ! scope="col" and row headers should have ! scope="row". The benefit of this is to allow users of screen readers to hear the row and column header for each cell if they choose. In that way they can navigate in any direction within the table and still receive useful information. The alternative is to restrict them to having to hear the contents of the table cell-by-cell from left-to-right, then top-to-bottom. Imagine trying to find the date of designation for St. Ignace Mission, if you had to hear every piece of information in every cell for every row above it first. I suggest that it would be a major benefit to mark up the first row as column headers with ! scope="col" and the Landmark names in the second column as row headers with ! scope="row".
4. Finally, images benefit from having alt text, because it is read out by screen readers. If we don't specify alt text (as with some of the images in the table), the wikimedia software supplies the filename as alt text which means the screen reader reads out the filename twice (because there is a link that is also read out). That must be incredibly annoying to visually impaired visitors. I don't know how easy it will be to fix but the alt text for the map in the lead is "List of National Historic Landmarks in Michigan is located in Michigan", which I find rather odd.

I'll keep this page bookmarked, so if you need any clarification or assistance, I should notice it. I'm also quite certain that any of the regulars here will also be happy to help out if needed. --RexxS (talk) 15:10, 8 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rexx, and thanks for your comments. Although I don't know that much about accessibility guidelines/policies on WP, I will try to answer your questions as best I can.

1. This also came up in the FLC for the Indiana list, which can be see at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of National Historic Landmarks in Indiana/archive2. The answer given there made sense to me, so I'm going to copy it here. In a list where "most of the cells were not colored, and the colored cells were different, [they needed] explanation by a color/symbol key. Here in this list, the light blue coloring is the base coloring, and only the differently colored cells need explanation." Is this wrong?
2. I really don't want to put this list out of step with all of the other national register articles/lists. So, I have left a message with the NRHP WikiProject to see if these colors can be changed throughout the project.
3. I think I have all of the column and row markers in the right place (I didn't really understand your explanation of placement, so I'm basing it off of another featured list I did where someone else added them in for me). Let me know if they're not right.
4. The lead "image" is actually a template, transcluded from Template:Michigan NHLs map. I have no idea how to (or if it's even possible to) add alt text to templates. I have added alt text to the rest of the images, although AFAIK this is not a requirement for FL status.

Thanks again, and hopefully the work that I did improved the accessibility of this list. Dana boomer (talk) 20:37, 8 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You've made some useful improvements to the list, and its accessibility has increased as a result. I'll re-examine the points:

1. I'm afraid I'd have to disagree with doncram's interpretation of the guidance. Where there is no information to be conveyed, then no colour and no symbol is obviously correct. If some information is to be conveyed and a colour is used to convey it, then providing a corresponding symbol will be helpful to the visually impaired. I don't agree with the concept of a base colour in this case. Let me put it another way, if this were a list of "important buildings in Detroit" and some were National Historic Landmarks, then any 'no information' item (i.e. not a NHL) would not have colour or symbol, but the NHLs would have both. In this list, you are providing two classes, NHL and NHLD, both of which convey information; both of which are coloured, and both of which would benefit from a symbol. I can see that you're suggesting that NHL is a base property of all of the list items and treating NHLD as a higher designation, but the introduction seems to imply that it is more an alternative. You're also still using the symbol '†', despite the fact that screen readers may read it as '?', or worse, silently drop it. There's a series of discussions at User talk:Bamse/Archive 2#Re: Dagger and double dagger with JAWS, Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/Philadelphia Phillies all-time roster (C)/archive1 and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Archive 11#Accessible symbols if you want to understand the issues more clearly.
2. I would be good if the colours could be adjusted throughout Wikipedia, but I don't expect that to be a quick job. As long as you don't place a wikilink on the NHLD colour, the contrast is acceptable, if sub-optimal. I must admit I have to strain a little to read the [5] reference link in the top-left cell, but I have poor blue-green discrimination anyway. Incidentally, is that footnote required in its present form? It lists several designations that are not used in this article, so it may be confusing.
3. Have a look at WP:DTAB that I linked above to see the recommended markup. You've made a good step forward with the markup you used, but I wouldn't have picked the number as the row header. Let's say a JAWS user wants to know the dates of designation of several sites. They can set JAWS to read row and column header before each cell, then go down the 'Date of designation' column. At present they would hear: "1, Date of designation, 1987"; "2, Date of designation, 1989"; etc. If, instead of the number, the Landmark name were marked as the the row header, they would hear: "Bay View, Date of designation, 1987"; "Calumet Historic District, Date of designation, 1989"; etc. I'm sure you'd agree that it would be much more informative for the screen reader user. You may want to add the plainroweaders class to restore the left-aligned, unbolded appearance to the names if you do mark them up as row headers (it's ! scope="row", not |! scope="row", by the way). You could look at List of ministers of law and human rights of Indonesia for an example of where the row headers are in the second column. I should mention that on my browser, the column headings are rendering as very bold because they are now marked as row headers (bold) and also have the '''Bold text''' markup as well. The latter isn't needed, and double-bolding doesn't fit with MOS:BOLD.
4. Thanks for adding the missing alt text on those images. Looking at other FLCs, I don't think that a list would currently pass if accessibility concerns were not addressed because WP:Featured list criteria number 5 requires compliance with the Manual of Style and its supplementary pages (which includes WP:ACCESS). I've added "Map of Michigan with National Historic Landmarks named and marked by a dot" as alt text to Template:Michigan NHLs map.[2] If you prefer different alternate text, it should now be simple to change it. Looking at the map in Firefox 9.0.1, I see the list of Detroit NHLs much more widely spaced compared to how they display in IE9, such that Pewabic Pottery is lost. The problem does not manifest itself in Google Chrome, but I'll have to boot up another PC to check in other browsers. This is probably something beyond your control, but I thought I'd flag it up.

If you'd like me to find other examples of best practice, or make some illustrative edits to this list, please feel free to ask. --RexxS (talk) 15:34, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

1. Whatever. Done.
2. Done.
3. I have no idea what you're talking about. The coding in this list is already way beyond my pay grade. If you want to change it, have at it.
4. Looks fine. I don't know about the map - I didn't make it and I'm not enough of a coding guru to change how it displays.

I'm sorry if I sound snarky on this, but it feels like I'm being asked to do things that are not part of the criteria. There are several other (older) nominations on the FLC page that are lacking alt text - some of which have been reviewed by one of the featured list directors, who really should know the criteria. Also, there are several on the list that include color coding with no markup, and this has not been challenged, nor has the readability of certain colors according to an external site been challenged on any of the nominations I looked at. If you're going to make lists conform to your (stricter than normal) standards, please do so consistently. Dana boomer (talk) 16:04, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm at a loss how to respond at this point. I did not feel that my standards were any stricter than the normal ones, or that I was being inconsistent. Other things keep me from reviewing many articles, but I try to as often as I can, so I really can't comment on lists that I have not reviewed. I'll ask for some other opinions and adjust my comments as necessary. --RexxS (talk) 16:26, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I found that the Template:Michigan NHLs map was setting the width of the div (the box that the text goes in) to 6em wide by default (that's about 6 characters). Somebody had prevented the line wrapping by inserting   between each word, so that each item was forced to be on one line. However, Firefox (but not IE) reserves space for the lines that it would need if the text wrapped, resulting in blank lines between each item. For future reference, there's no need to put   between words, just add |line_width=12 (or whatever number works) to make the containing box wider like this. --RexxS (talk) 00:27, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support: Apologies for not revisiting sooner, but I've been on a wikibreak. Thanks to the collaborative efforts of Dana and TRM, the article is now as compliant with our expectations for accessibility as possible, and I'm more than happy to recommend the awarding of FL from the standpoint of accessibility. I do understand that it can be difficult for editors to appreciate the difficulties that visually-impaired visitors can have when reading our articles, but I believe that our standards are being raised across the 'pedia – and our featured content can take much of the credit for those improvements. Well done Dana! --RexxS (talk) 18:53, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the support, Rexxs! I apologize again if I was a bit snarky above - table formatting makes me slightly frustrated on the best of days, but I shouldn't have taken that out on you... Dana boomer (talk) 22:05, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome, Dana, and there's nothing to apologise for: you've worked hard on this. Formatting tables for accessibility is a relatively new innovation and nobody can be expected to take it all in without considerable practice, but we pride ourselves at FLC that we do our best to iron out problems as far as we can. I hope I haven't put you off from nominating more lists in the future :) --RexxS (talk) 23:24, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments –

• General Motors Building: Oddity here, as there seem to be two competing descriptions.
• Grand Hotel: Double period at description's end (one inside quote marks, one outside).
• Highland Park Ford Plant: Remove "were" from "Automobile manufacturing operations were begun in 1910..."? Giants2008 (Talk) 02:37, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Giants and thanks for your comments! I apologize for taking a while to get back to you - I haven't been on WP all that much in the past few days... The above should be addressed. Thanks again, Dana boomer (talk) 19:38, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support NapHit (talk) 21:59, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I don't see neither the keys nor the indicated green/blue background...--♫GoP♫_T^C_N 14:39, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• I have absolutely no idea what is going on with those tables. The last time I looked at it (granted, that was probably a week ago) both the color and the keys were there. Now, I agree, they're not. All of the formatting is still there, it's just not showing up in the reader screen. Nothing has been done to the article - maybe something's going on with the table formatting on the back end? Anybody else have any ideas? Dana boomer (talk) 15:31, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you mean the # National Historical Landmark (in blue) and the + National Historic Landmark District in turquoise key, I can see it fine. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:56, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I can see the key itself fine. It's when I scroll down to look at the rows of information for each landmark that there is no formatting. Where previously some rows were blue and some were turquoise and some had one symbol and some had the other...now there's nothing. It's just all gray. Dana boomer (talk) 16:27, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yeah, I see. I'll have a closer look.... The Rambling Man (talk) 17:06, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like it was this edit when you tried to force the sorting and used a display=none bit of coding.... The Rambling Man (talk) 17:13, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Rightyho, I've trialled one change, it looks promising. You may need to use the {{sort}} template (with a preceding couple of zeroes for safety!!) but follow the guidance of what I did here should do the trick. If not, I'll retire, scramble my password and delete my user page..... The Rambling Man (talk) 17:24, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, don't do that!!! Then I won't have anyone to tell me how I managed to screw up the table this time :) Anyway, I think I've managed to complete the rest of the changes to make the pretty formatting come back...please let me know if I've managed to screw anything up! Dana boomer (talk) 23:03, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good to me! The Rambling Man (talk) 07:58, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Support The major issue was resolved, and otherwise the list is excellent.--♫GoP♫_T^C_N 19:19, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks, GOP! Dana boomer (talk) 22:05, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.