Re: summary of resolutions from last 2 days

The following point that the mailing list is focusing on is just *one* 
of several issues that caused us to propose moving the existing 
criterion to Level 2. In the discussion this was less of a concern than 
other issues raised. Note that several people listed a number of tools 
that  produce valid code, including a list of open-source CMS (with 
various claims about the validity). < 
http://www.designdelineations.com/design-notes/2005/01/15/need-open-source-cms-with-valid-xhtml/>

>    > "Current WYSIWYG and CMS tools do not necessarily generate valid code, 
>    > making it difficult or impossible for many authors to meet this SC. (We 
>    > cannot force authors to do manual coding to conform to WCAG.)"
>    
>
For completeness, the first two issues that were part of our summary 
included:

    * That well formedness and validity can benefit accessibility.
      However, forcing strict adherence to the specification can
      sometimes inhibit accessibility. Also, validity of any declared
      specification in and of itself doesn'’t guarantee accessibility
      because you could create your own specification and be valid to it.
    * If forced to strictly use specifications you might be restricted
      from doing things you want to do that would not be harmful to
      accessibility.

For these first two points, we considered the following situations:
1.  embed/object  - to be valid, you need to use an alternative DTD ala 
<http://www.yoyodesign.org/doc/dtd/html4-embed.html.en>. 
2. DHTML roadmap - currently, the code is "invalid" but is intended to 
increase the accessibility of content.
3. A DTD/schema that does not contain accessibility features - content 
could be valid, but inaccessible.
4. There is a lot of invalid code that is accessible. 

Therefore, as Matt argued, validity is too restrictive a test for Level 
1. Well-formedness is less restrictive and perhaps a better test of what 
actually creates accessibility problems (that are not covered elsewhere 
in the guidelines). Part of the proposed resolution is an action item to 
investigate a proposal for a Level 1 Success Criterion for Guideline 4.1 
to address well-formed content (knowing that "well-formed" needs to be 
broadened a bit to accommodate non-XML technologies).

Best,
--wendy

-- 
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
http://www.w3.org/WAI/
/--

Received on Wednesday, 15 June 2005 09:31:52 UTC