Comments on HTML Techniques for WCAG 2.0

Hi there.

Being into semantics and standards-compliant webdesign, and severely 
concerned with accessibility issues (in college, I daily deal with some 
blind coleagues' difficulties in accessing information in the Web), I 
thoroughly read your "HTML Techniques for WCAG 2.0" document, and these 
are the comments I have thereto. Sorry for:
1. being a little "short hand" on some points, making it seem as I'm 
being harsh or something
2. possible English failures (non-native rusty English speaker here).

4.2 - Isn't the q (shortquote) element more appropriate for the persons' 
lines (one is quoting what they said), applying the Italian language to 
the second one? Not only is it more close to the original meaning, but 
it also allows for the proper styling with CSS (most notably, it is not 
granted that every language in the world uses the " character for 
these kinds of quotes, which clashes with it being hardcoded in HTML).

4.2/5.3 - (Not much of a comment, more of a dilemma probably worth 
thinking upon for further clearing up)
In most languages, acronyms are spelled in that language, regardless of 
what language is the full expression they stand for. Example: in 
Portuguese, "HTML" is spelled with the Portuguese names of letters H, T, 
M and L , but the original expression is English and should be 
pronounced so. Given this, which applies (asumming that the document is 
already declared as being Portuguese):
<acronym title="HyperText Markup Language" lang="en">HTML</acronym> 
(because the acronym title should be pronounced as English)
or
<acronym title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</acronym> (because the 
acronym should be spelled in the document language, in the case Portuguese)
, for the (supposed) correct reading-aloud by screenreaders that support it?

5.7 - Wouldn't "--- William Shakespeare (Love's Labor Lost)" be more 
correctly coded within a <cite> element (possibly even without the dash, 
that would be further coded in CSS)?

9.4 - The icon as a background image of the "a" tag, with CSS: isn't it 
acessibly suitable? (Yes, the screenreader won't give the user the 
notice that there is an icon there, but isn't the icon here presentational?)

10.13 - "Don't use background images" -- isn't this a bit perceiving? I 
think the text exactly below is more specific.

15.2 - How about reinforcing the deprecation of implict labeling with an 
explanation on semantics -- implicit labeling "reads" that the input is 
part of the label , when that isn't the reality.

Yours sincerely,

-- 
Joćo Craveiro
"I live the way I type: fast and with a lot of mistakes."
http://www.jcraveiro.com/



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Received on Wednesday, 24 August 2005 02:51:03 UTC