Re: WAI AU guidelines comments

At 02:31 p.m. 01/12/99 +0100, Daniel Dardailler wrote:
>> HotDog already generates standard markup as defined by the W3C,

>This statement makes me wonder if we shouldn't strenghten the
>guideline about generating valid markup to be generate *only* valid
>markup (not that I know or think HotDog doesn't do that already, just
>wondering about it).

Disagree.  The user should have the right to turn off the "valid
HTML only" checker.  Why?  Because there are some well meaning
authoring tools out there that will happily remove "invalid" HTML
such as LONGDESC, ABBR, etc, in the name of validity.  Of course,
these tools were made when only HTML 3.2 existed.

>> Accessibility must be clearly defined in black and white, not in 256
>> shades of grey. You cant be "a little bit accessible".
>As a matter of fact, I think you can be a little bit accessible, or
>completely accessible; there are so many variants.

I agree 100% with Daniel here.

>> Using your current guidelines it is completely unfeasible:
>> - For a Webauthor to create and maintain multiple varieties of
>> markup,
>I understand this is a reality for some web design shops, but given
>that W3C promotes a unique standard markup, we clearly do not want to
>encourage multiple varieties of markup.

Why not?  Isn't that what DTDs are for?  (And doesn't the W3C
offer multiple versions of their style sheet depending on what
browser is autosensed?)

Plus, XML _will_ produce something close to "multiple varieties
of markup".  Insisting that there is only one true HTML may be a
good rhetorical stand to take, but the authoring tool makers AND
the front-line designers have to live in the real world, and they
should be able to produce whatever is fitting for their circumstances.

I believe accessible code should be the _default_, however, and you
have to go out of your way in order to deliberately turn stuff OFF.

>If you look at www.microsoft.com or www.w3.org with a text-only
>browser like lynx, you'll see that they are both accessible (both
>suffer from information overload syndrom, but that's a different
>story).

www.hwg.org is the same way :) -- decently accessible with lynx,
but aie, information overload.

By the way, hi to everyone who doesn't know me.  My name is Kynn
Bartlett and I'm the President of the HTML Writers Guild.

--
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                   http://www.kynn.com/
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet      http://www.idyllmtn.com/
Design an accessible web site:                http://www.kynn.com/+fedweb
Enter the Virtual Dog Show                        http://www.dogshow.com/
Enroll now for my online CSS course!             http://www.kynn.com/+css

Received on Tuesday, 12 January 1999 13:47:17 UTC