styling

In the most general terms the ATAG doesn't mention much about using CSS,
the implication being that any authoring tool makes it at least possible
to use style sheets (and certainly, at least the <STYLE> element) to
avoid the temptation to use presentation (which of course should be
*entirely* controlled by other than deprecated or proprietary markup) to
convey semantics.

The main force behind the desirable separation of presentation from
structure and content is in the referencing of ATAG to WCAG, where this
issue is extensively addressed notably at "1.3 Ensure that when the tool
automatically generates markup it conforms to the W3C's Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines 1.0". 

Further at "3.2 Help the author create structured content and separate
information from its presentation" is a MIC (Most Important
Commandment). Of course the main means of this separation is brought
about through the use of a separate entity (a style sheet) to control
presentation without using it to convey semantics - only appearance.

Because the lifelong training of most designers is based on conventions
that have semantic implications that *seem* inherent, this is a
difficult trait to overcome. A really good tool would ferret out
examples of misuse of presentation and warn the author to find a way to
convey the information without *just* using presentation.

The classic example is to have more than one class of <EM> depending on
whether it's a warning or a WARNING!. It is not good enough to have a
style class named "warning" that comes into play under the <EM> umbrella
but makes its point by turning the text red, or whatever. Without
auxiliary identifiers the semantic point that this particular <EM> is a
warning rather than just an emphasizer should be pointed out.

4.5 Allow the author to transform presentation markup that is misused to
convey structure into structural markup, and to transform presentation
markup used for style into style sheets. [Priority 3] 

To evaluate if a tool does this actually implies that it have some sort
of means to find instances of these practices to help the author by
pointing them out. At the very least the tool MUST allow changes of this
sort to be made.

Guideline 7 intro: "The style preferences of the editing view must not
affect the markup of the published document."

One should actually be able to use a personalized sytle sheet for doing
any edits without the chosen styles having any effect on the final
product.


-- 
Love.
            ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE
http://dicomp.pair.com

Received on Tuesday, 22 August 2000 15:52:41 UTC