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

Hello Joe, Charles and others

** Examples **

Here are some examples of documents that differ when rendered without a
style sheet (or with a browser's default style sheet).  I hope that this
helps to clarify the discussion.

Alis Technologies, Inc.
    http://www.alis.com/en/index.html
Drop down lists don't correspond anymore.  eg "Languages" is no longer
associated with the languages choices.

Autonomy, Incorporated
    http://www.autonomy.com/
A large amount of additional text information appears in the non-CSS
version.  This actually seems to be a good thing, in this case.

Avaya Communications
    http://www.avaya.com/
Drop down lists don't correspond at third level.  Eg "Avaya Global Services"
is no longer related to the list of Avanya Global Services.
    
BEA Systems, Inc.
    http://www.beasys.com/framework.jsp?CNT=homepage_main.jsp&FP=/content
Drop down list: all list items are repeated, and are turned into text.
    
BitFlash Graphics, Inc.
    http://www.bitflash.com/
Additional text at the end of the page.  Looks like a menu list.

Bowstreet
    http://www.bowstreet.com/
Additional text at the end of the page.  Looks like a menu list.

** Methodology **

Examples are drawn from the A's and B's of the W3C member's list.
    http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List

I displayed each example in Safari (with style sheet enabled) and in
Internet Explorer (with style sheet turned off).  I noted where there was a
semantic difference between the two.

At the same time as sending this e-mail, I sent a note to the Web master of
each example to let them know about this debate.  They may gain from the
discussion (and it seemed like the polite thing to do).

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



On 23/06/2003 2:19 AM, Joe Clark at joeclark@joeclark.org wrote:

> 
> To combine two messages here:
> 
>>> Some standards-compliant methods of displaying images purely using
>>> CSS would be disallowed by a surface reading of the paragraph
>>> quoted above.
>> 
>> Yes. There are ways that comply with the specifications of CSS and
>> HTML of including content that I would argue should not be used, for
>> accessibility reasons.
> 
> Examples found in real-world sites, please? (Examples *plural*.)
> 
>> Disagree that this is relevant to whether the HTML is valid or not.
>> Disagree that this is a hypothetical problem (although it surprises
>> me that it isn't).
> 
> Nobody has been able to provide real-world counterexamples.
...
Rest deleted for brevity.

Received on Tuesday, 24 June 2003 19:06:09 UTC