Re: R: Re : Influence of valid code on screen readers

Roberto Scano:
 > An interesting article:
 > 
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200506/web_standards_vs_accessibility/

I think you go on missing the point. Valid code is better. What I say is 
that it is not true that *only valid code can lead to accessible pages*. 
So we must not put it in p1! It's a very basic reasoning.

 > And a piece of interview to Judy Brewer (all text is interesting!):
 > http://easi.cc/media/trans/tnbrewer.htm

Oops... this page is inacessible... cause it's invalid. And you said 
nothing? ;-)

 > "If you are generating a sort of junk HTML, or if you are generating 
invalid markup, you
 > are invariably introducing some accessibility problems with that 
because it is harder for
 > the assistive technologies to work with the invalid markup."

Even if it's harder for assistive technologies to work with invalid 
markup, it doesn't mean that invalid markup can't be accessible. The 
real world is an evidence. The same Judy's interview page is an 
evidence. If it weren't true, no disable user should be able to navigate 
up to now... and that is false.

Hard do not mean impossible.
So it's why valid code is *important*, but not a *preliminar requisite* 
to accessibility.

Roberto Castaldo:
 > What I'm trying to say is that valid code can be considered - by W3C 
working
 > groups making standards for the Web - as the only starting point on 
which a
 > developer can base its accessible pages.

And what I think I've proved with my examples is that valid code is not 
the only way to have some accessibile page. It's better to have valid 
code, but is not the only starting point. It is more like a sort of 
higher quality assurance. But there's a lot of thing far more important.

We have to put in p1 only things that always raise up real accessibility 
walls, things that make content impossible to access, things disabled 
users can't live without. If a text equivalent is missing, there's no 
way to access to that content. No way.

(I think Bruce Bailey is joking with this argument in his mail: alt text 
is p1, definitively, as we all know: it is often the only mean to offer 
real alternative content, and image names isn't enough; validity isn't a 
real mean to nothing but semantic web, as far as I can tell, but 
semantic web isn't accessibility).

So you should demonstrate that all invalid pages (not only some of them) 
makes content really inaccessibile, not only sometimes harder to access 
and understand: it is a very different concept. If you can demonstrate 
this, I will agree to put validity in p1.

Maurizio

Received on Monday, 20 June 2005 16:21:52 UTC