Re: WAI-level A and general tidy questions

AFAIK, Tidy does not correct accessibility problems.  It only 
provides diagnostics.  However, to fill in table summary 
attributes with boiler plate would, imo, be counter-productive 
to actual usability by the blind.  Besides, that is only one 
of the many accessibility checks.  To read more about these,
thanks to the folks who contributed the WAI checking code, see 
their documentation here:

http://www.aprompt.ca/Tidy/accessibilitychecks.html

More responses below.

take it easy,
Charlie

On 22 Dec 2002 at 23:26, m.tarasiewicz wrote:
> 
> hi list.
> i am using html tidy on linux i386 for merging a large amount of files
> to HTML 4.01 WAI-level-A. i have some general questions on how to work
> in a good way with tidy to accomplish all the tasks needed for this.
> 
> i found the -access switch which is not documented at all, but
> described in a prevous thread on this list
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/html-tidy/2001OctDec/thread.html#1
> 12
> 
> just for understanding this switch completely:
> -access 1
> would give just warnings on level-A of WAI?
> 
> in general:
> as far as i noticed, wai guidelines are processed by giving warnings
> about e.g. missing summary attribute in <table> tags. but actually i
> would need options to add or change specific tags, if there are
> problems with wai-compatibility.
> 
> the "-notidy" option, as mentioned here
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/html-tidy/2001OctDec/0126.html
> would be a very handy thing, as i would let me check the output file
> of html-tidy for wai-compliance, and not the unparsed input file.

You can accomplish part of what you want with a simple script.

tidy --force-output yes foo.html | tidy -access 3 -o foo2.html

I.e. you run the accessibility checks on Tidy's output rather 
than the input.

> but to my questions:
> 1. is it possible, to have a wai-correction besides a wai-checking,
> like adding table summary attribute with standard-text, if there is
> none?

Probably not feasible.  As many of the checks are content 
related.  I.e. is the content represented in a visual (or 
audio) only manner?  Is there an effective alternate 
representation.  Is there enough context for automated readers 
to work well?  These are the basic themes, as I read them, of 
the WAI guidelines.  In fact, there is a great deal of "noise" 
in Tidy's warnings as it cannot make determinations of 
semantic content.

 
> 2. is it possible, to set the lang attribute in the <html> tag, if
> there is none set at all? the "language" switch has no effect at
> all...

Not sure what you mean here.  Can you send an example?

> 3. is it in general possible with tidy, to create other mappings or
> rulesets, about how tags are processed? i mean replacing tags for
> example, or adding attributes, etc.

There are not current any methods in TidyLib for updating the 
document tree.  That said, it wouldn't be too difficult to add 
them.  In the short run, a decent alternative is to use Tidy 
to produce well formed XHTML and use any number of W3C DOM 
tools to manipulate the content.  Either way, you need to 
design and implement your own mappings and rulesets, etc.

Received on Monday, 23 December 2002 16:05:54 UTC