comments on latest guidelines

* Concerning color blindness, a technique that is missing is:

Do not use images as text since users cannot override 
the colors (or size) of images. Use stylesheets to color your text. 
Color blind users may override all author's defined style-sheet 
genereted colors. (and low vision users will use the appropriete font size)

* In B the technique: "...and bit-maptext with alt-text (for special text
effects) may be used,.." contradicts what I said above. Images as text are 
a big pain.  Look it up in WebTV's guide:
http://developer.webtv.net/docs/xplat/Xplat.htm

* concerning the technique: "Avoid deprecated elements 
 and attributes... (TT ..."
TT is not deprecated.

* the guideline "Enable keyboard operation of all page
elements." 
This is quite confusing for me as an author. I do not know 
whether the user has a key board or not or how he navigates or 
operates anything, and I realy shouldn't care. It would be better to 
say "do not assume the user uses a GUI with a mouse. It is also 
more consistent with the details.
(also WebTV's guide is anti-mouse and hates image maps, 
although TV is a graphical medium) 

* How do I use D-link with FRAME?

* the rationale for using meaningful link phrases applies 
to all users. Many users scan the page for links and have 
to slow down if the descriptions are "click here", "click there".
This is not a particular problem of blind users.
(actually 95% of the guidelines increae usability for all users)

On the technique page:

In the ASCII art bit. the STYLE element should 
not be inside a comment. Its content may.

Concerning:
 "Ensure that pages are readable and usable 
without style sheets for browsers that do not support 
them or users who deactivate them. Since style
sheets are a new phenomenon, older browsers will not 
support them and it will take a while for new browsers to 
support them in a standard way." 

The fact that stylesheets are a new phenomenon 
has nothing to do with why HTML documents shouldn't 
depent on them. 

Authors are not expected to write stylesheets 
for all media (also new media can emerge after 
a page is written),  and users can override the author's 
stylesheet. Therefore pages should always work with 
the user's default.

Concerning examples:

There should be one form, not a table version 
and text version. I use the text version since I have to scroll
horizontally to read the table one. The guidlines encourage
to attempt to write one accessible version.   

Nir Dagan                            
Assistant Professor of Economics      
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Barcelona (Spain)

email: dagan@upf.es
Website: http://www.econ.upf.es/%7Edagan/

Received on Thursday, 23 July 1998 12:37:37 UTC