- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 10:31:25 -0500 (EST)
- To: Cynthia Shelly <cyns@whatuwant.net>
- cc: "W3c-Wai-Gl@W3. Org (E-mail)" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Hmm. The WAP forum sstates publibcly that they expect the next version of WML to be more or less the same as XHTML basic. I would like us to be able to use tables. I think we need to heavily push the use of assistive technologies such as tablin, in order to make this reasonable. I propose that the issue of who tracks that go to the coordination group. I agree that scripting would be very valuable. We need to determine still whether there is scripting support realisitically available. In particular, I have come across a lot of people using script-capable software but turning off the scripting becuase it interferes with their assistive technology, or because the operation of scripts is too disorienting. I am still hopeful that by the time these guidelines become a Recommendation this will have changed. I still believe that it is important that a solution is more or less freely available - particularly for countries where the cost of a computer is in fact higher than the cost of expertise to make it work. (In the USA, the cost of a computer is a small fraction of the cost of that expertise. In Vietnam, the cost of the expertise is a small fraction of the cost of the computer. And as a result of recent history there are a lot of people with disabilities in Vietnam.) cheers Charles On Tue, 28 Nov 2000, Cynthia Shelly wrote: Here's my very tardy action item on browser characteristics. I hope it will help in our discussion of user agent capabilities on Thursday's call. I think WCAG 1.0 implies that all browsers support the following Rendering of HTML 2.0 or greater Link following via http GET links in the http:// and mailto: formats <img> and alt Form submission via http GET and http POST We've assumed that all these features are present, yet some early browsers did not support forms or mailto. Remember when HTML authoring guides used to admonish authors to put an email link on all forms? And, just in case they also didn't support mailto, to put a cut-and-paste-able email address on there too? There are no guidelines about this in WCAG 1.0, so we've obviously drawn a line about backward compatibility. A fair bit of time has passed since WCAG 1.0 was created, and it may be time to move that line. I offer for your consideration two features that are widely supported in mainstream browsers. I am limiting this to HTML browsers, not WAP phones, as a believe that WAP/WML and HTML will always be separate final-format renderings created from some single data source. 1.) Some form of scripting. It would be very useful to be able to offer techniques for making scripts directly accessible. Yet, WCAG 1.0 says that you shouldn't do anything in script that you can't also do in noscript tag. This rules out a lot of useful features, so of which may even make a page more accessible to a user with a browser and accessibility aid that support it. There are browsers for all major platforms (including Windows CE handheld devices) that support these forms of scripting. Here's one possible way to define minimal script support: * ECMAscript (standards-based javascript) * some level of Document Object Model accessible by script (maybe the intersection of script supported by netscape 3 and the DOM level-1 spec?) * links in the javascript: format 2.) tables, including nesting. Note that this does not remove the requirement that tables linearize well for voice rendering. It just moves the onus to the assistive technology instead of the author. On a somewhat related topic, we should spend some time considering what to do about accessibility features that have been implemented in some browsers and not others. For example, IE 5 has implemented tabindex, accesskey, label, and other accessibility features that degrade gracefully on other browsers. It would be nice to see some techniques that say "use this spiffy new feature" instead of "don't use this crumby old feature". -- Charles McCathieNevile mailto:charles@w3.org phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136 W3C Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia September - November 2000: W3C INRIA, 2004 Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France
Received on Wednesday, 29 November 2000 10:31:30 UTC