RE: Proposal for 1.3, "Ensure that information, functionality, and structure are separable from presentation"

Responding to my post, Joe writes:

<blockquote>
And I keep explaining to the Working Group that structure and
presentation 
can never be totally separated even in theory. The use of, for example, 
CSS background images and the :before and :after property are examples
of 
the commingling of presentation and structure.
</blockquote>

Agreed. The challenge to authors remains: to ensure that the information
they want to communicate doesn't become imperceptible. Using valid code
in and of itself may not accomplish that in all cases. (This is not
about whether or not a Certain Browser should support the :before and
:after properties; of course it should.)

John





"Good design is accessible design." 
John Slatin, Ph.D.
Director, Accessibility Institute
University of Texas at Austin
FAC 248C
1 University Station G9600
Austin, TX 78712
ph 512-495-4288, f 512-495-4524
email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu
web http://www.utexas.edu/research/accessibility/


 



-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Joe Clark
Sent: Monday, May 02, 2005 10:35 am
To: WAI-GL
Subject: RE: Proposal for 1.3, "Ensure that information, functionality,
and structure are separable from presentation"



> It seems to me we're trying to ensure that neither "information" nor 
> structure is "lost" through being inappropriately bound up in 
> presentation.

And I keep explaining to the Working Group that structure and
presentation 
can never be totally separated even in theory. The use of, for example, 
CSS background images and the :before and :after property are examples
of 
the commingling of presentation and structure.

> By "structure" I mean the way "informaiton" is organized, as expressed
> in whatever code the author's chosen technology requires.

For HTML documents and tagged PDF, there is nothing we can require
beyond 
what the standardistas have been doing for four years while the Working 
Group has been asleep at the wheel: Using valid, semantic HTML.

> As I said in an earlier post, the problem isn't that someone might be 
> silly enough to publish an empty document.  The problem is that 
> someone might publish content that some users would perceive while 
> other users would find the "same" content completely *imperceptible* 
> solely by reason of their disability.

Then get them to lobby the makers of their adaptive technology to render

CSS background images and :before and :after content (to use two
examples) 
in a way they can handle.

Using HTML and CSS *to spec* may cause accessibility problems in *user 
agents* that are not the purview of the Web *Content* Accessibility 
Guidelines Working Group.

> I believe that the intent of GL 1.3 is to guard against that 
> possibility, and the success criteria should define what must be true 
> of content in order to accomplish the goal.

The success criteria have been proposed and are not something this
Working 
Group is going to be able to meaningfully change. The minimum criterion
is 
also the maximum criterion: Use valid, semantic HTML.

-- 

     Joe Clark | joeclark@joeclark.org
     Accessibility <http://joeclark.org/access/>
       --This.
       --What's wrong with top-posting?

Received on Monday, 2 May 2005 16:00:23 UTC