- From: William Loughborough <love26@gorge.net>
- Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 06:16:23 -0800
- To: "Sean B. Palmer" <sean@mysterylights.com>, <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
At 01:15 PM 11/16/00 +0000, Sean B. Palmer wrote:
>why CSS and all other types of styling should be intrinsically linked to
>the *semantics* of the document.
It actually has as much to do with the structural aspects that are
implicitly generated by classes. If (and it usually is the case) a styling
class causes a presentational visitation on a document that can be used by
a sighted person to help "skim" the document, the blind user is
disadvantaged by the structural aspect that enhances skimming being
unavailable. If the only reason "Robin" wants the styled stuff a certain
size and color is some kind of fashion statement it is often argued that
this is a "purely decorative" instance. This is almost never the case
because scanning visually for red stuff is a technique that clearly
provides an advantage for the retinally-enabled (blindlesss) reader.
It's not that well-chosen classes are intrinsically *bad* but that their
"structural purpose" is unexposed under present circumstances. The "reason"
for the class choice should be revealed so that a user's agent can deal
with it in some semantic sense - whether it imparts meaning ("new", "sale",
etc.) or structure. IOW the act of creating/using a class in CSS involves
imparting content/structure (in addition to presentation) and it has, by
nature of the way CSS is used/revealed, enabled abuse in accessibility terms.
--
Love.
ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE
Received on Thursday, 16 November 2000 09:14:34 UTC