Re: [166] Organize documents so they may be read without style sheets

Hi Joe and all

In general, CSS aids accessibility.  However, I have stumbled across the
problem that you describe with CSS-generated content.

On some Web pages, I would like to distinguish content contributed by other
authors.  I set up CSS rules that add initials to the end of each
contributed item.  To help sighted readers, I also coloured the contributed
items.

Without the CSS (eg Internet Explorer 5.2 under Mac OS X), readers get
colour, but no initials.  With the CSS (eg Safari 1.0 beta 2 or Netscape
7.02 under Mac OS X), they get colour and initials.

A simple example can be seen at:
    http://purl.nla.gov.au/net/jod/metadata/css_example.html#after

The relevant CSS is:

.hawks:after 
    {
    content: " [tomtom]";
    }

As far as I am concerned this flunks WCAG 2.0, or any other accessibility
requirement.

This doesn't change my belief that the content of the document should not
rely on style sheets for the user to know what it is.  I just don't know how
to do it in this case.

-- 
Jonathan O'Donnell
04 2575 5829
http://purl.nla.gov.au/net/jod/
mailto:jonathan.odonnell@ngv.vic.gov.au



On 7/06/2003 3:28 AM, Joe Clark at joeclark@joeclark.org wrote:

> 
> The issue is:
> 
> doesn't work with XML, where a style sheet is required to allow a sensible
> reading of the document. But this is not yet noted in the errata. I
> propose the following errata for this checkpoint:1. This checkpoint is
> only applicable to HTML documents.2. This checkpoint does not require that
> stylesheets not be present, but rather that the content of the document
> does not rely on style sheets for the user to know what it is.
> 
> Response:
> 
> The relation of this bug to CSS-generated content needs to be explored. If
> the author intends for CSS-generated content to be an integral part of the
> experience, will the author flunk WCAG 2.0 when the HTML page is viewed
> without
> that generated content?
> 
> Note that this further impinges on any suggestion to use CSS-generated content
> as a solution to a WCAG accessibility problem.
> 
> References
> 
>  3. http://trace.wisc.edu/bugzilla_wcag/show_bug.cgi?id=166
> 
>

Received on Wednesday, 11 June 2003 18:52:46 UTC