Re: Minutes from 16 November 2000 WCAG WG telecon

> Let's start with possible. How do you do it now? When you encounter a
> page that has a personally impossible background but contains information
> you are interested in. What *exactly* do you do to make that page usable
> to you?

Hmmmm. I haven't rally considered the "best" approach for now, but I would
say that the *first step* is this:-
a) Turn off backgrounds in browsers (rarely, but if possible)
b) Use this user style sheet:

body { background-color: #000000;
background-image: none; }

But that is only a little bit of the story. The real problem is converting
all of the text from a dark color into a light one...that's where the fun
begins. Sometimes I just print the document out if it's that inaccessible to
me, which costs a small fortune in printer ink!

> > Background and font rarely have a semantic meaning, but when they do
> > there are better alternatives:-
>
> To me, Background and font are semantic. I am returning to your
> discussion of <b> vs <strong>. What are the semantic commands
> for these two features?

How can <font> be Semantic? It's a typographapic command, not an abstract
definition of the text that it marks up. What do you mean by semantic
commands? [If you style something, there must be a reason for it, unless
it's to make it look pretty.] If you mean what do they actually *mean*
semantically:
<b> doesn't mean anything. It is a typographic instruction to a UA to render
the maked up text as bold type.
<strong> means present the marked up text as being strong. It does not offer
a typographic (or otherwise) instruction, and is therefore behaviour-less.
<font> <b> <i> and so on don't imply meaning, they command behaviour. In
other words, they don't say anything about "why" this bit of text needs to
be bold (for example), they just scream "do it!". If you say "this text
needs to be stronger than the rest", the user can then decide how s/he wants
it to be presented as being stronger to them. You could advise boldness by
using class="bold".

> I'm trying to understand what is "semantic" about commands in style
> sheets for commands that aren't "semantic" in HTML.

Nothing. "color: #000000;" isn't semantic, but the point is that 1) the CSS
style is separate from the content, 2) it is overridable and replaceable
(whereas hard wired content rarely is), 3) it isn't being used to achieve
semantic definitions of the text to which its style applies.

> I truly feel that the User Options to set background and font style and
> size are of little interest to most users of the web. I don't see them
> becoming a major attraction. This may be just my own opinion.

Little or no interest??? They are important to me and many other disabled
users, who can't use pages without them. If the author *set in stone* the
background as being red and the text as green, it is hard to override that,
but essential to do so! By hard wiring style into the document, it dashes
any hopes of changing the styling: and there could be many reasons why
someone would want/need to change the style.
Style should be up to the user of the document, not the creator of the
document, because the creator cannot correctly divine who is going to use
the document, and what their needs are. This isn't a point to be taken
lightly, as it prevents many people from using the Web i.e. promotes
inaccessibility.

Kindest Regards,
Sean B. Palmer
http://xhtml.waptechinfo.com/swr/
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/
"Perhaps, but let's not get bogged down in semantics."
   - Homer J. Simpson, BABF07.

Received on Thursday, 23 November 2000 10:10:00 UTC