for Web - Help
What DrivelDefenceWeb is For
DrivelDefenceWeb will help web page developers assess their web pages for Plain English, as part of a general effort to improve web page accessibility. The World Wide Web Consortium has published Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Guideline 14 says Ensure that documents are clear and simple so they may be more easily understood
. DrivelDefenceWeb is intended to help achieve this, but will not be enough on its own.
If you are interested in checking plain text rather than web pages, look at the associated product DrivelDefenceText.
DrivelDefenceWeb is Freeware and must not be sold.
What DrivelDefenceWeb Will Do
DrivelDefenceWeb will:
- examine a web page on your local disk,
- report the length of individual sentences on that page,
- work out the average sentence length,
- suggest possible substitutions of words, based on the Plain English Campaign publication 'A to Z of Alternative Words'.
What DrivelDefenceWeb Will Not Do
DrivelDefenceWeb will NOT:
- work with live web pages on the web,
- analyse any other file types except complete local web pages,
- check spelling,
- check grammar,
- make any changes to a web page.
Prerequisites
DrivelDefenceWeb is written as a web page, and runs within a web browser.
- DrivelDefenceWeb contains JavaScript. So, your web browser needs to be configured to allow JavaScript to run.
- DrivelDefenceWeb needs to open new windows when it is running. So, your web browser needs to be configured to allow popup windows.
- DrivelDefenceWeb uses the Word Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Document Object Model (DOM). It will run on browsers that support this DOM. (Recent browsers should be OK).
- DrivelDefenceWeb will work best where:
- the underlying web page structure accurately reflects the structure of the document, and
- where care has been taken over the proper ending of sentences with full stops.
- Web pages being tested should first be checked to make sure they pass W3C validation.
- DrivelDefenceWeb will be put on your local disk. Web pages being tested by it also need to be on a local disk. You may need to copy web pages from your web server to meet this condition.
Limitations
- English is a complicated subject. There will be cases where DrivelDefenceWeb will not correctly identify possible word substitutions, or correctly find the ends of sentences.
- The structure of web pages can sometimes mean that some text does not end with a full stop. In these cases DrivelDefenceWeb may add such text to following text in the page, even when on the web page itself there is physical separation.
- Text shown in graphic images, and 'alt' text, are ignored.
- DrivelDefenceWeb will attempt to recognise common abbreviations (such as ie., eg., etc., pm., am., St., Rd., Co.) and not interpret the full stop as the end of a sentence. As detection of a sentence end requires a full stop followed by a space or line break, web addresses should be correctly dealt with.
- If DrivelDefenceWeb identifies a long sentence, or a potential alternative word, it does not mean you must change it. It is simply intended to be a tool to highlight possible areas of improvement. You must use your judgement.
Using DrivelDefenceWeb
Step 1: Choose the Local File to Inspect
Use the 'Browse' button to browse to the target file , which must be on a local disk. Once you have selected the file to inspect, its path will appear in the text field. Now click the 'Inspect' button. This will cause a new window to be opened, with the target file loaded into it. It is important that this new window is left open. The DrivelDefenceWeb form will be updated with relevant details it has got from the target file. The 'Browse' and 'Inspect' buttons are now greyed out, as you now need to move to Step 2. If you need to repeat Step 1, click the form 'Reset' button and start again.
Step 2: Decide How to Analyse the File
The target file will be analysed as described by the settings in the DrivelDefenceWeb form for step 2.
- Include/Omit by ID. It is common for web pages to have features that you would not want to be included in a Plain English check. This might include web page headers or footers, or navigation features that might be the same on every page. Often such features are given an id attribute in the page's underlying markup code. DrivelDefenceWeb lists all the page ids, and allows you to pick out those items which you do not want to include in the analysis. Also listed with the id is the type of the page element that has that id. Note that if an element with an id is omitted, all child elements within it are also omitted. You can swap an element from one list to the other by highlighting the element and clicking the relevant 'Move to' button. Also, double clicking the relevant item will do the same thing where this feature is supported by your browser. If the web page contains no elements that have an id, then the table controls will be greyed out, and the include list will say '< none found >'.
- Ignore headings. Section headings in a web page are often very short, and not sentences. They would not normally be included in a calculation of the average word length of sentences in a page. Ticking the 'Ignore headings' box will mean all headings coded <h1> to <h6> will be ignored in the page analysis.
- Ignore list items. List items are items coded as unordered (bullet), ordered (numbered or lettered), and definition lists. Sometimes list items are very short, with just a few words each. Sometimes they can be very long, where each list item comprises several sentences. If the page has one or more short lists, you might wish to ignore list items. Otherwise you may wish to include them. If they are included, the format of the list items becomes important. Depending on the style employed, list items may end in a full stop, a comma, or not be terminated at all. Since DrivelDefenceWeb relies on full stops to recognise the end of a sentence, a tickbox is provided to end list items with a full stop. This will help make sure the analysis of the page is accurate.
- Ignore tables with column headings. Tables can be used for two main purposes on a page. First, to control the layout of the web page. Second, for presentation of tabular data. In the first case, generally the layout table will not have headings, and will be invisible on the page. In the second case, tables will often have headings (using the <th> tag), and be a visible table on the page. Such tabular data will often not be sentences, in which case, you may wish to ignore such tables.
- Report sentences. The report on the page will include the calculated length of sentences detected in purple italics. Either all sentences can be reported (useful to check they have been properly detected), or just those with sentences of length 20 or more words.
- Report possible alternative words. Ticking this box will cause detected sentences to be examined for possibly helpful word substitutions, using the Plain English Campaign publication 'A to Z of Alternative Words'. Possible substitutions are shown in red bold text.
Step 3: Analyse the File and Act on the Findings
Clicking the 'Analyse' button will cause the target web page to be examined and reported in line with the settings made during Step 2. The report will open in a new browser window, and is itself a web page. Items are reported in the order in which they appear in the original web page. The report can be printed using the 'Print' button at the top of the report. If you want to keep a file copy of the report (eg. to e-mail to someone), you will need to do this manually. This is because JavaScript will not allow files to be saved automatically. To save the file:
- right click(PC)/ ctrl click (Mac) in the report window,
- choose the 'View page source' option from the popup menu,
- choose 'Save file as' from the browser menu bar. Save the file with a .htm extension.
DrivelDefenceWeb will not make any changes to the examined web page. It is up to you to use the report to make any changes to the page using your normal web page editing tools. Note however that the average sentence length for a page is expected to be between 15 and 20 words. See the Plain English Campaign guide 'How to write in plain English'.
To analyse another page, click the DrivelDefenceWeb 'Reset' button. This will close all previously opened windows and reset the contents of the form.
Troubleshooting
'Your browser does not have scripting enabled. To use DrivelDefenceWeb, you must enable scripting'.
This message will appear at the top of the DrivelDefenceWeb page. DrivelDefenceWeb uses JavaScript, and will not work unless your browser is set up to allow JavaScript to run. Check your browser security settings. Once you have enabled JavaScript, reload the DrivelDefenceWeb page and you will no longer see this message.
'File not Found'
Normally, clicking the inspect button will cause a new window to open with the local file of interest loaded in it. If a blank window appears, it is because the file cannot be found. This is normally because the path to the file or the file name have not been correctly entered. See step 1.
'WARNING: extracted text does not end in a complete sentence'
When you click the 'Analyse' button, normally a dialog box will appear telling you how many characters and sentences have been extracted from the page. Sometimes however, this may also be supplemented by 'WARNING: extracted text does not end in a complete sentence. It ends with the following sentence fragment, which will not be included in the analysis: ....'. This means that the page contains words at its end that do not form a complete sentence (eg. because there is no final full stop). You will need to end the sentence properly to prevent getting this warning, and to make sure that the text is included in the analysis.
'Warning: Unresponsive Script'
This can sometimes occur if you are analysing a large page, or have asked for more things to be included in a page report. The browser realises that the page script has been running for a while, and thinks something may have gone wrong. Continue to run the script and it should finish successfully.
'Access is Denied'
This can occur after clicking the Inspect button, which opens a new window and loads the target web page into it. Access to the code inside the page can sometimes be denied if the target web page is on a different local drive. Try moving the file to the same local drive where you have DrivelDefenceWeb, and try again.
No h1 element found!
This can be reported in the DrivelDefenceWeb form and also in the target file analysis report. It means that the target page does not contain an <h1> heading element. The structure of the page should be correctly represented in its underlying markup, and this will normally mean all pages should have a top level <h1> element defined. Add one to the HTML page to avoid this message.
Don't forget...
Don't forget to check the Plain English Campaign website for the latest tips on using Drivel Defence.
