Re: Re : Influence of valid code on screen readers

Tina Holmboe wrote:

>On 19 Jun, Maurizio Boscarol wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Valid code does not mean well structured code. We are always 
>>counfounding this two things.
>>    
>>
>
>  I agree that this is confusing; let's see if we can't clear it up.
>
>    * Valid code means well structured code. That's what syntax checking
>      markup does: testing to see whether elements are correctly nested,
>      whether elements are placed inside appropriate other elements, and
>      so forth.
>  
>

Yes. And some other little things (what kind of characters and data are 
legal and where).

>    * Valid code does NOT, however, mean *appropriate* structure. It's
>      fully possible to write a document which is syntactically correct
>      but semantically void; not to mention valid but with entirely
>      inappropriate structure.
>
>  However: valid code means valid structure. This is a fact of the way
>  SGML-based markup languages work, and we need to accept it.
>  
>

Yes, ok.



>>I don't agree, because validity issues that can be automatically
>>tested are often issues that aren't related with accessibility.
>>    
>>
>
>  They certainly are - I still remember that unclosed A which made the
>  entire document one huge link. A quick validation would have caught
>  that issue, and saved quite abit of trouble. The author in that case
>  was an instant convert, you might say :)
>  
>

I'm totally agree to validate pages as best practice for authors. It is 
really useful to catch errors. Really, really useful.
But we aren't talking about useful practice. We are deciding if 
validation is a P1 or L1 issue. That is, as I can see P1, things that, 
if missing, surely make up accessibility problems.

And that can't be said!


>>But if we cannot know if validity massess with accessibility, we
>>cannot put it in p1.
>>    
>>
>
>  But we must. We know this: invalid code MAY lead to a situation
>  where the user *cannot access the information at all*; this is - or
>  was - a criteria for p1.
>  
>

Well, if "may" is the criteria, ok. But then I think that almost 
everything is P1. :) Take "Real-time captions are provided for /live/ 
multimedia". Why does it stand in level 2? It's important! Very 
important. Maybe here the "reasonable effort" criteria is used, to 
recognize that it can't always be easily done.

In fact I thought of this criteria:

    *

      *Level 1 success criteria:*

         1.

            Achieve a minimum level of accessibility through markup,
            scripting, or other technologies that interact with or
            enable access through user agents, including assistive
            technologies

         2.

            Can reasonably be applied to all Web resources.


(http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/)

But maybe I misunderstood.

bye!

Maurizio

Received on Monday, 20 June 2005 22:52:13 UTC