Raggett Guides

From Agenda for WAI EO WG meeting August 27 1998
Requested comment on sample tutorials
- Dave Raggett's draft tutorial on HTML http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/
- and CSS http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/style.html

I like Dave Raggett's plain English writing style, and approach to the guides.

I am unclear as to whether the material on accessibility is to be left
implicit in some areas and made explicit in others. For example - providing
a distinctive title for a page is useful for everybody  (bookmarks etc.),
so is there no need to stress the accessibility advantages? Or should they
be mentioned to reinforce the justification for the overhead of providing a
meaningful title for every page? To people who are aware of accessibility
issues, it may seem as if the text is belabouring the point. To people who
are not aware of the issues it is novel material which would not ordinarily
have occurred to them.

I've been working on a sample html document which is annotated for
accessibility techniques etc. I wondered if it might be useful for the
reader if the Raggett 10 Minute Guide had something similar which used
examples from the text? The comments should probably be shorter and the
language is not plain enough, but I offer the following as an outline of
what I suggest. For example:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 4.0//EN">
<html>
<head>
<!-- A sample document annotated for accessibility -->
<title>My first HTML document</title>
<!-- Title aids navigation because a brief, descriptive page title can
reflect the name and hierarchy of the web site. Good titles also make it
easier to recognise pages in a history list or collection of bookmarks. -->
</head>

<body>

<h1>An important heading</h1>
<!--  Heading levels should only be used to structure a document, and not
to contrive formatting effects such as font size. Style sheets are a more
elegant solution for formatting-->

<p>This is the first paragraph.

<p>This is the second paragraph.

<h2>A slightly less important heading</h2>

<p>Another paragraph

<ol> <!-- An ordered, numbered, list -->
<li>the first list item

<li>the second list item
  <ul> <!-- An unordered, bulletted, list -->
  <li>first nested item

  <li>second nested item
  </ul>

<li>the third list item
</ol>
<!-- List elements should only be used to create lists, and not to contrive
formatting effects such as indentation. Style sheets are a more elegant
solution for formatting -->

<h2>A slightly less important heading</h2>

<p>Another paragraph
<img src="peter.jpeg" width="200" height="150"
alt="My friend Peter" longdesc="peter.html">
<!-- Paragraph text with an illustration. Use of the alt and longdesc
attributes means that people who can not see the screen have access to both
short and more detailed descriptions of the picture, and its information.
-->

<p>Another paragraph
This a link to <a href="peter.html">Peter's page</a>
<!-- Paragraph text with a link. The descriptive name means that users have
a good idea of the content of the link and where it will take them. -->

</body>
</html>


Stella O'Brien, KO2
email: smo-brien@lioness.demon.co.uk

Received on Tuesday, 1 September 1998 07:38:55 UTC