Re: Review of WD-WAI-HAG-19980123

I concur with Daniel's comments. Examples of the use of style sheets to
overcome the problem of associating list items with images are definitely
needed: both the case in which the image can be relegated to a CSS style
and that in which it conveys significant content and needs to be given in
the markup with associated ALT text. I also think that navigation bars can
be problematic. An interim solution might be a navigation page which could
serve the same purpose, with a link to it at the start of each HTML
document. The navigation page could provide both an image map and a
textual alternative. If navigation bars are used, they should be marked
with class=navbar as Daniel suggests.

Likewise, if the PRE element contains computer programme code rather than
text in a natural language, this fact should also be marked for the
benefit of braille and speech output software, perhaps as class="code".

Standardised class values are an important component of accessible HTML
document construction, since they will also enable the reading order of
the document to be modified by the HTML user agent. This topic will
presumably be discussed within the Protocols and Formats group.

The BLOCKQUOTE element should only be used to mark genuine quotations, but
not as a means of indenting text where no quotation is intended. This is
probably discussed somewhere in the guidelines but I can't remember
reading it in the latest version.

Received on Tuesday, 27 January 1998 23:12:57 UTC