Re: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Warner ten Kate wrote:

> I have one comment in that the Introduction suggests 
> the guidelines concern any type of access, ie. not 
> only improvement of access by disabled persons, but 
> also access through constrained devices or access 
> under special circumstances.
> 
> Although the guidelines can be used, and likely
> will be used, to improve presentation in such cases, 
> I found that serving that purpose would cause me 
> to reconsider some of the Priority ratings.
> 
> Concerning resource constrained devices, those are 
> designed as such, aiming to serve a certain application. 
> It is a question in what level those devices require 
> more comprehensible access, and when required, whether 
> other solutions can be provided.
		(snip)
> I am not stating the guidelines are not beneficial 
> to the wider area, but I would suggest to restrict 
> the scope of the Guidelines to access by disabled people
> more clearly (the Abstract does mention this).
> I expect doing this will help the understanding of 
> the document and its use.

I fully agree with Warner on this point.

> - checkpoint 5.1:
>   I was confused by the wording "nest". I understood that as, eg,
>
>     <h1>
>        heading 1 text
>        <h2>nested header</h2>
>        remainder heading 1
>     </h1>
> 
>   which isn't valid HTML.
>   I think the intended meaning is, eg,
> 
>     <h1>heading 1 text</h1>
>        ...
>        <h2>nested header</h2>
>        ....
>     <h1>other heading 1</h1>
> 
>    the "nesting" concerns the alignment with the 
>    contextual organisation.
> 
>    I find this is an interesting observation:
>    The content model of the heading elements doesn't reflect 
>    this guideline. In fact, two informations are needed:
>    - structure of headings (ie. nesting as reffered in this guideline)
>    - the (text) data being in those headings (what h1-6 model)
>    A combined model could go in the direction of:
> 
>     <section>
>        <h>heading 1 text</h> 
>           <!-- heading 1 because of child of first section -->
>        ...
>        <section>
>           <h>nested header</h>
>              <!-- heading 2 because of child of second level section -->
>            ....
>        </section>
>        ....
>        <h>other heading 1</h>
>     </section>
> 
>     where levels can be set (like numbers on a <li>)

Just FYI, ISO-HTML [1] takes a very strict attitude towards this issue,
and actually it *requires* to "nest" sections, by introducing pseudo
elements <div1> through <div6>, though, these elements shall not appear
in valid ISO-HTML documents.  An example:

     <h1>heading 1 text</h1> 
     <div1>
     ...
        <h2>heading 2 text</h2>
        <div2>
         ....
        </div2>
     </div1>
     <h1>other heading 1</h1>

If you are interested in it, take a look at relevant section of User's
Guide to ISO-HTML [2].

[1] http://purl.org/NET/ISO+IEC.15445/15445.html
[2] http://purl.org/NET/ISO+IEC.15445/Users-Guide.html#h1

Regards,
-- 
Masayasu Ishikawa / mimasa@w3.org
W3C - World Wide Web Consortium

Received on Friday, 12 March 1999 00:08:18 UTC