- From: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU>
- Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 10:12:40 +1100 (AEDT)
- To: WAI Markup Guidelines <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
I entirely concur with Charles' comments and would only add that most of the techniques listed in the document are easy to implement and will substantially improve the usefulness of a web site for a significant proportion of visitors. The new structure of the guidelines attempts to derive the detailed recommendations from basic principles in a way that minimises the number of distinct guidelines. The techniques then provide specific methods whereby the requirements specified in the guidelines can be satisfied. The table which summarises the guidelines also offers an excellent overview and makes it possible to ascertain which items are of the highest priority. So long as the guidelines are clear and well organised, any competent site designer should be able to follow them without an unduly inordinate expenditure of effort. I have spoken to page authors in the university context who have applied these principles successfully, indeed enthusiastically. This task has been substantially simplified by the tendency to generate web pages dynamically in the server, with templates providing the basic, uniform structure and with the content of each documented being inserted automatically by means of a script or "include" directive. This approach even allows different versions of the same page to be generated based on the user's preferences, and eases the maintenance burden.
Received on Thursday, 12 November 1998 18:12:47 UTC