XHTML1.1 removes tabindex, accesskey and deprecated elements

XHTML1.1 is a significant cleanup of legacy intermixing of presentation
with structure and content.

    http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/

I have just today noted two changes affecting
accessibility. I guess the reasons, I was not party to discussion of why.

I note that in Appendix A: Changes from XHTML 1.0

     http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/changes.html#a_changes

XHTML 1.1 represents a departure from both HTML 4.0 and XHTML 1.0. Most 
significant is the removal of features that were deprecated. In addition,
some features that were available have been removed. In general, the
strategy is to define a markup language that is rich in structural 
functionality, but that relies upon style sheets for presentation.

1. Drops from the anchor <a ...> the attributes   tabindex and accesskey.

These had significant accessibility use.

The tabindex allowed short-circuiting the linear tab ordering, to allow
a short-circuiting of long lists of links in the left-most column. Only
those with explicitly enumerated tabindex="#" were considered. When these
were exhausted, the unenumerated ones were considered in the order from
the sequence in the document instance. Problems included skipped values, and
duplicate values. I do not know why they were dropped. The workaround is
to put the list of jump links before the long list in the leftmost column
(often in a single leftmost cell of a layout table.) If the intent with
XHTML1.1 is to have stylesheets replace layout tables, those existing
documents with a layout table and tabindex would no longer have the benefit
of the short-circuited behavior when tabbing through the links.

The accesskey feature allowed author-assignment of a shortcut key pattern
to a navigation action. These could override conventions of a particular
operating system or application, so could become confusing. The accesskey
assignments have no universally agreed use, so behaviors were uncertain.

2. XHTML1.1 drops support for the following element types. Most have been 
deprecated in prior versions of HTML or XHTML1.0:

     base
     basefont
     center
     font
     frame
     frameset
     iframe
     isindex
     menu
     noframes
     object
     s
     strike
     u

The loss of object, with its list of alternative renderings, provided
a default means to append as the last option a textual description of
a non-textual object. This is presumably replaced by use of such textual
description within each individual non-textual object. That static
description is available for any reference to it, and can somehow be
exposed as a user preference. Different references to such an object
that need to use different descriptions would need to include those
in the referencing context.

Is this a coordination group issue? If so, someone please take it to CG.

Regards/Harvey Bingham

Received on Tuesday, 5 September 2000 16:32:16 UTC