- From: Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>
- Date: Tue, 15 Jun 1999 09:18:22 -0400
- To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Hello, I think the WG should strengthen a statement in the guidelines that any important content inserted by a style sheet be available in the document source as well (rationale: device-independence, users can override styles, etc.) The line between content and style is blurred by some parts of CSS. Style sheets may cause numbers or words to be generated in the rendering structure, just as they can insert images. Most users will have a difficult time distinguishing the document tree from the rendering structure, and will have to read the style sheets to find out whether "1.2" was generated by styles (and therefore may be changed through styles) or inserted by hand. In the Techniques document of 5 May, we raise this issue obliquely: Text generated by style sheets is not part of the document source and will not be available to assistive technologies that access content through DOM, level 1 ([DOM1]). I think we need to make a stronger point. Here's an example. W3C Recommendations use a background image in the upper left hand corner to indicate on graphical browsers that that they are Recommendations. There is no alt text for this image since it's inserted by a style sheet (and CSS has no mechanism for specifying alt text. On the one hand, one can argue that if the information is being inserted by a style sheet it is only meant for style, not content, and therefore not alt text is necessary. On the other hand, people argue that one shouldn't put text in images but should use styles so that the text is accessible. Also, languages like SVG that create graphics will real text in them tout the accessibility benefits. Does the title of the document suffice to convey the document status? - Ian -- Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org) http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs Tel/Fax: +1 212 684-1814
Received on Tuesday, 15 June 1999 09:18:18 UTC