RE: Proposal for 1.3, "Ensure that information, functionality, and structure are separable from presentation"

> It seems to me we're trying to ensure that neither "information" nor
> structure is "lost" through being inappropriately bound up in
> presentation.

And I keep explaining to the Working Group that structure and presentation 
can never be totally separated even in theory. The use of, for example, 
CSS background images and the :before and :after property are examples of 
the commingling of presentation and structure.

> By "structure" I mean the way "informaiton" is organized, as expressed 
> in whatever code the author's chosen technology requires.

For HTML documents and tagged PDF, there is nothing we can require beyond 
what the standardistas have been doing for four years while the Working 
Group has been asleep at the wheel: Using valid, semantic HTML.

> As I said in an earlier post, the problem isn't that someone might be
> silly enough to publish an empty document.  The problem is that someone
> might publish content that some users would perceive while other users
> would find the "same" content completely *imperceptible* solely by
> reason of their disability.

Then get them to lobby the makers of their adaptive technology to render 
CSS background images and :before and :after content (to use two examples) 
in a way they can handle.

Using HTML and CSS *to spec* may cause accessibility problems in *user 
agents* that are not the purview of the Web *Content* Accessibility 
Guidelines Working Group.

> I believe that the intent of GL 1.3 is to guard against that
> possibility, and the success criteria should define what must be true of
> content in order to accomplish the goal.

The success criteria have been proposed and are not something this Working 
Group is going to be able to meaningfully change. The minimum criterion is 
also the maximum criterion: Use valid, semantic HTML.

-- 

     Joe Clark | joeclark@joeclark.org
     Accessibility <http://joeclark.org/access/>
       --This.
       --What's wrong with top-posting?

Received on Monday, 2 May 2005 15:34:58 UTC