- From: Nir Dagan <nir.dagan@econ.upf.es>
- Date: Fri, 07 Aug 1998 00:50:46 GMT
- To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
I agree with Gregg that there is no necessity to have the guidelines applicable only to HTML4.0 or any particular level of HTML, and they perfectly apply to HTML3.2 etc. To rephrase my original claim, the concept of an accessible HTML document requires that the author using the guidelines have some DTD or spec. for HTML. The guidelines are organized by "principles", and then "how to". The principles apply to all HTML DTDs including those not endorsed by W3C and those that include the EMBED and the NOEMBED elements. The principles are general. The "how to" depends on the spec. you use. In order to make the "how to" parts not too complicated, lets stick to DTDs endorsed by W3C in our examples. A previous remark on this mailing list said that the argument that BLINK and MARQUEE should not be used because they are not a part of the HTML spec. is bad reasoning. I agree. The reasoning should always be derived from the "principle", not from the DTD we have in mind. This being said, writing in HTML endorsed by W3C is by itself a good principle, since 1. other DTDs are not widely supported, 2. Non- W3C elements that are supported are supported in a non-uniform manner. In particular, HTML4.0 loose endoresed most of the extentions that are widely and uniformly supported. (as well as many that aren't) A good example is NOBR that has inconsistent documentation by Microsoft, Netscape and WebTV. 3. Structures supported by non-W3C DTDs are not supported by many browsers. E.g., the "Mozilla spec" of Webtechs allows <H1><CENTER>Centered heading?</CENTER></H1> which renders fine in Netscape and Explorer, but since CENTER is block level by W3C (HTML3.2/4.0) Opera considers it an error and recovers by closing the heading before the CENTER start tag, thus rendering it like regular centered text. Also using HTML4.0 is better than others because it has more accessibility features. Nir Dagan Assistant Professor of Economics Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona (Spain) email: nir.dagan@econ.upf.es http://www.econ.upf.es/%7Edagan/
Received on Thursday, 6 August 1998 11:47:30 UTC