- From: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU>
- Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 14:24:39 +1000 (AEST)
- To: WAI Markup Guidelines <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
At the WWW7 conference, there was some discussion of the need to generalise the guidelines by abstracting the principles of universal design from their specific HTML implementation, and then providing examples in HTML/CSS, XML, etc. The consensus seemed to be that such an effort would be appropriate in the design of the second version of the authoring guidelines. It seems that such a plan would accommodate Sean's suggestions. It will be interesting to notice how quickly XML is actually adopted by web site designers. I would be sceptical of a solution that relies on client-side scripts, since many people with disabilities are likely to be depending upon Lynx, the W3 browser within Emacs or another text-based solution which does not support client-side scripts. The best solution is to use CSS positioning instead of tables to prescribe the visual appearance of a document. With CSS 2 now at the proposed recommendation stage, and with positioning features having been available in draft form since last year, it is to be hoped that software implementors will soon be able to provide support for it, thereby relieving authors of the temptation to abuse table markup, at least once the new browsers are adopted by the public. As to the issue of convincing site developers to follow the guidelines, this problem is being most ably addressed by the WAI International Programme Office. I remain convinced that the prohibition against the abuse of tables for columnar layout purposes should remain, as a required (or paramount) item in the guidelines.
Received on Wednesday, 6 May 1998 00:24:54 UTC