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

In response to Tim's query about whether WCAG 2.0 will "encourage" or
"merely tolerate" use of things like the CSS content property and the
:before and :after pseudo-elements, Loretta proposd a possible SC under
2.4 and then went on to say:

<blockquote>
.... if applying a CSS style sheet or, especially, if changing a 
style sheet changes the information that is programmatically available 
to the user agent, there needs to be some sort of notification that 
things have changed. This also seems relevant to scripting issues.
</blockquote>

I'd have thought that the SC that was proposed last week for 1.3-- the
one saying that anything that could be changed via the UI could also be
changed programmatically-- could be redrafted to cover this situation as
well.  In other words, maybe it doesn't matter whether changes occur at
the level of the user interface or in some other layer-- what matters is
that changes must be available to assistive technology.

I would appreciate some information about what responsibility belongs to
the author here and what belongs to the API and the user agent. I don't
say this to challenge the proposal-- I just don't know enough to make an
informed judgment here and would welcome better information.

John



"Good design is accessible design."

Dr. John M. Slatin, Director 
Accessibility Institute
University of Texas at Austin 
FAC 248C 
1 University Station G9600 
Austin, TX 78712 
ph 512-495-4288, fax 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 lguarino@adobe.com
Sent: Monday, May 02, 2005 6:19 PM
To: Tim Boland
Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: Re: RE: Proposal for 1.3, "Ensure that information,
functionality, and structure are separable from presentation"



> In CSS2.1, content may be generated by two mechanisms:
> 
> (a) the "content" property (in conjunction with the :before and
> :after pseudo-elements)
> 
> (b) elements with a value of "list-item" for the "display" property
> 
> How are such mechanisms to be treated in WCAG2.0?   More 
specifically, 
> is the use of such mechanisms to be encouraged or merely tolerated
in 
> the context of web content accessibility?

I wonder if we need an additional success criterion for GL 2.4:
<proposal> Chnages to content, structure or relationships within the
content can 
be programmatically determined.
</proposal>

I'm not sure that "programmatically determined" is the right phrase 
here. But if applying a CSS style sheet or, especially, if changing a 
style sheet changes the information that is programmatically available 
to the user agent, there needs to be some sort of notification that 
things have changed. This also seems relevant to scripting issues.

Loretta

Received on Tuesday, 3 May 2005 02:54:04 UTC