Re: Server Side Include Accessibility

On Thu, Jun 27, 2002 at 11:11:10AM +0100, Kirsten Williams wrote:

> I've searched but can't find any information as to the accessibility of
> server side includes. Is it acceptable for accessibility purposes to use SSI
> to create a "text only" version of a website, so that the graphics and

  The consensus on this seems to be one of "Well, ok, but what's the point"
  and I must say I agree.

  Firstly, it wouldn't be all that easy to use plain SSI - you need some way
  of detecting whether or not the incoming request was from a source that
  wanted/needed/should be assumed to want/need the text only version. That
  suddenly make things alot more touchy. I posted an URL a while ago to an
  experiment we've done with something similar relating to CSS; I don't
  mind doing that again:

       http://www.greytower.net/en/archive/articles/customcss.html

  Secondly, there is the question of whether this is at all worth the
  effort - would not extensive use of <noscript> and alt="..." constructs
  achieve the very same effect and at the same time avoid the entire issue
  of which browsers to actually serve this content to ?

  Basically, even if it is in the WAI, it is worth asking whether it is
  really any point in a separate, text-only, site when - given use of
  such things as alt="..." - browsers that handle text only do such a
  good job of picking out only the text by themselves.

    - If the UA can't handle Javascript, it won't request Javascript but
      make do with the <noscript> content.

    - If the UA can't handle images, it won't request images but make do
      with the alt="..." content

  ... for various non-technical values of 'cannot handle', naturally.

-- 
 -    Tina Holmboe                    Greytower Technologies
   tina@greytower.net                http://www.greytower.net/
   [+46] 0708 557 905

Received on Thursday, 27 June 2002 08:08:41 UTC