[NFBCS] Inaccessible calendars on websites

[Doug Lee]

Actually I never thought carefully about it until I started writing my reply to Tracy earlier; but this
01-Jun-2024 format is one of the only ones I've seen, with the possible exception of the ISO 2024-06-01
format, that is completely unambiguous. That much about this three-character-month format is cool. But of
course, it's also English-centric...

On Sat, Jun 15, 2024 at 07:58:23AM -0700, NFBCS mailing list wrote:
	Hello.  And, that, is why web sites don't have users type in the dates they want; there
are so many formats to choose from that users would time out if they had to slog through error
messages saying what they did wrong.   Even worse, in the case of mm-dd-yyyy versus dd-mm-yyyy,
there are many dates which overlap with those two formats and are completely wrong, but would
not be caught by a mechanical checker.  Consider: 05-01-2024.  That's either May 1, 2024 or 5
January 2024, but if a user typed it in, the web site couldn't error check it and say one way
or another if it was correct.  I remember reading a lot of Unix source code when I lived in
England and the Sccs revision dates looked like: 03/02/83.  Was that March second or February
3rd?  Who could say unless one could find an example where there was a date that didn't work in
one of the formats.

	One technique I've discovered for getting through these date entry issues on some web
sites, assuming one is using a screen readder on a touch screen capable machine, is to use my
finger to find the date I want.  If I assume the calendar is a grid of dates where the rows are
days of the week and the columns are dayes of the month, I can usually find the correct date
fairly quickly by moving my finger around as the dates are announced.  

-thanks
-Brian

On Jun 15,  7:28am, Tracy Carcione via NFBCS wrote:
} Subject: Re: [NFBCS] Inaccessible calendars on websites
} The website I was trying to use yesterday did allow me to type in a date,
} which I always prefer, but it's an Irish site.  They wanted the date in
} format dd-mmm-yyyy.  What the heck is a 3-byte month?  I tried everything I
} could think of, but couldn't hit on the right formula
} But there are plenty of sites where typing in a date is not even an option.
} Tracy

-- 
Doug Lee                 dgl at dlee.org                http://www.dlee.org
"When your best-laid plans have turned to dust, vacuum!"
- Whoopi Goldberg