Problems - UA and AT problems

We should not be ignoring things because they are AT problems - my 
authoring tools are most commonly vi, notepad, simpletext (all text 
editors) or a set of Macros in a non-HTML aware version of MS Word. This 
is deliberate - it enables me to write accessible code easily.

The Guidelines are there for (among other groups) people like me, to 
learn how to do it properly. If I were using an accessible AT I wouldn't 
need to read most of the guidelines (in theory), and I would expect the 
ones I did need to read would be provided to me by the software I had 
paid good money for.

UA problems are stock-in-trade for the guidelines - it is important that 
they point out what the problems are with current UA's (and older ones 
are still current in many cases) as part of the rationale for a guideline.

The current debateabout dlinks and LONGDESCs is an example of where it is 
important to understand that UAs do not necessarily solve a problem as we 
would hope when we read the specification. Therefore, an author has to 
pick up the slack. (Ultimately, the buck stops with the authors as well 
as the browser manufacturers)

Charles McCathieNevile

Received on Tuesday, 9 June 1998 20:29:23 UTC