- From: by way of Wendy A Chisholm <Don@designenterprisesofsf.com>
- Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 15:05:10 -0500
- To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
List and Wendy I've done some research about how "avoid deprecated features" is interpreted by validation services for WCAG 1.0, Guideline 11.2 with the following results. 1. AccMonitor by HiSoftware as used on Cynthia Says will apparently not pass any deprecated elements or attributes. This means only strict HTML will pass Prioirty 2. 2. The Bobby validation test will not pass any deprecated elements of HTML 4.0. The Bobby test ignores deprecated attributes. This is clearly indicated in their help documentation. 3. A-Prompt from the University of Toronto apparently ignores 11.2. How does a Web Site indicate to a validation service and the public that a web page is using markup "violated for backward compatibility"? The word "avoid" allows for human interpretation that does not work for software. When you say "avoid deprecated features" do you mean "avoid deprecated elements" or "avoid deprecated elements and attributes"? In the book "Accessible Web Sites" Cynthia Waddell indicates that countries are starting to use the WCAG as a part of their laws. This places an awesome responsibility on the WAI to avoid ambiguous meanings. Can the WAI provide a Validation test to avoid the different interpretations that currently exist? If not maybe you could change "avoid" to "minimize the use of deprecated features" or "minimize the use of deprecated elements and attributes." This would clearly signal that human judgement is involved instead of the absolute test that Validation software imposes. Another alternative would be simply leave 4.1d off and just let 4.1a carry the burden. Good Luck on working out WCAG 2.0. Don McCunn
Received on Monday, 12 January 2004 15:09:06 UTC