RE: Politics: Strict Guidelines Considered Harmful

Very clever Kynn, but quite disingenuous.
(1)  CSS is formal and can be validated.  That gives it quite a measure of
authority and mitigates against its abuse.  (This is also a small barrier to
its initial use since there is something new to learn.)
(2)  Most of use have seen sites that were inaccessible because of the use
of <font> and the like.  Can you cite one real-world reference where valid
CSS was used but the results decreased accessibility?

On a related thread, I would like to argue that support of Netscape
Navigator 3x (and even 2.02) is quite legitimate.  In my last job in state
government, our typical setup was a Windows 3.11 machine running a 3x
browser.  I have no firm figures, but I would guess that Windows 3.11 is
still not all that uncommon in the schools.  Additionally, if we want to
reach out to ecumenically depressed areas, continued support of older
configurations should be a consideration.  All that said, I still think
validated HTML plus CSS is still the best way to serve these customers and
modern clients simultaneously.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On
> Behalf Of Kynn Bartlett
[snip]
> 1.  CSS, and its like, if allowed are likely to be misused. 
> (decreasing accessibility)
> 2.  If disallowed, CSS, and its like, will be used anyway as that
>      level of the guidelines will be ignored. (decreasing 
> accessibility)
[snip]

Received on Tuesday, 19 December 2000 08:48:17 UTC