Re: invalid docs. and WAI guidelines

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