Re: Should validity be P1 or P2? (was RE: summary of resolutions from last 2 days)

On 21 Jun, Maurizio Boscarol wrote:

> But we *are making a list!*- A sort of. We are dividing things in 
> priorities, possibly using a common criterium (defined in the draft).

  And herein lay the difficulty.

  We can not - realistically - make a list of all possible combinations
  of syntax errors. However, we know that they fall, roughly speaking,
  into one out of two categories:

    - Errors which may, or may not, make it harder for an UA
      to parse, but has relatively little impact on accessibility, and

    - Errors which make it very difficult to parse, and prevent users
      from accessing the information *at all*.

  The latter type is, I think we can all agree, a p1. The former might
  just be a p3. However, there is no way to tell them apart without
  making an extensive list of all errors in all combinations AND test
  in all browsers.

  There are quite a few arguments for why taking a conservative stance
  on the latter kind of errors is a good thing, but consider, for a
  moment, alternative content:

    - Some images, even without alternative content, have no information
      to communicate. Setting these to alt="" could very well be argued
      a p3. Access to information is not prevented in this case.


  Some cases of invalid code are p3. Some are clearly p1. I argue that
  for this reason alone we need to put this requirement into the highest
  priority checkpoint possible.


  Could we take a moment to discuss the philosophical idea that
  something which is known to, in certain cases, prevent access to
  information *should not* be a p1?

-- 
 -    Tina Holmboe                    Greytower Technologies
   tina@greytower.net                http://www.greytower.net/
   [+46] 0708 557 905

Received on Tuesday, 21 June 2005 09:15:31 UTC