RE: Mapping HTML Techniques to WCAG 2.0

This rationale makes sense to me.
John


"Good design is accessible design." 
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John Slatin, Ph.D.
Director, Accessibility Institute
University of Texas at Austin
FAC 248C
1 University Station G9600
Austin, TX 78712
ph 512-495-4288, f 512-495-4524
email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu
web http://www.utexas.edu/research/accessibility/


 



-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Michael Cooper
Sent: Monday, February 16, 2004 8:58 am
To: WAI GL (E-mail)
Subject: RE: Mapping HTML Techniques to WCAG 2.0



Just to explain the thinking on this - it's true that <title> is
required by the HTML spec and that is enough to require it in HTML
techniques under Guideline 4.1 (use valid code). If we thought <title>
was important solely for that reason, we would have mapped it that way,
as we did with some other elements. But we were thinking that, in
addition to being part of valid code, there are specific accessibility
benefits of this element. It was for that reason that we were trying to
map to 2.4.1 (facilitating orientation in content). A parallel situation
is the "alt" attribute of <img>. That, too, is required for conformance
to the HTML 4.01 DTD, but it is also important for accessibility beyond
simply that, and so we map that to Guideline 1.1 (text alternatives for
non-text objects). 

Perhaps the thing to do is, for those techniques that have an
accessibility benefit beyond simply leading to valid code, we should map
those techniques to the appropropriate guideline/success criterion, as
we were trying to do with <title>. If there is a technique for valid
code that does not otherwise have a specific accessibility benefit we
can think of, we should map it to 4.1, or perhaps just have a general
technique mapped to 4.1 that says "validate your code". A current
technique that might be an example of this case is 2.3, the <!DOCTYPE>
statement: unless we find that browsers handle accessibility features of
documents differently based on doctype, we might not see a need to
explicitly call out a requirement for it but would expect that to be
captured in the validation process.

Michael

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wendy A Chisholm [mailto:wendy@w3.org]
> Sent: Friday, February 13, 2004 3:53 PM
> To: Michael Cooper; WAI GL (E-mail)
> Subject: Re: Mapping HTML Techniques to WCAG 2.0
> 
> 
> I disagree with "The title element: 2.4.1.x - need to create
> a success 
> criterion"
> Guideline 4.1 says, "use technologies according to spec."  
> "title" is a 
> required element in HTML 4.01 [1], thus html:title must be 
> used and is 
> covered by success criterion/guideline 4.1.
>

Received on Monday, 16 February 2004 10:16:24 UTC