Re: Validity as a technique

Hello.

Your proposal sounds really interesting, and perfectly "catching" most 
of the basic problems with the topic.
Just I'm not sure I fully understand what - validity as a necessary but 
not sufficient technique for all the success criteria that require 
something can be 'programmatically determined' -  means.

Validity isn't a tecnique: it is a document property. I think we should 
say that *validating a page*, in the sense of "using a code validator to 
determine validity error", is necessary but not sufficient (or another 
approriate formula) to test the success criteria that require something 
can be programmatically determined.

If this is what you mean I totally agree. This is exactly what 
validation should be used for: finding some error that can be related to 
accessibility. A process, rather than a goal itself (when talking about 
accessibility, of course).

Maurizio




Yvette Hoitink wrote:

>Hello everyone,
>
>I'm trying to find some middle ground on the topic of the requirement for
>validity in WCAG. One of the many arguments for requiring validity at level
>1 had to do with the fact that otherwise, some of our other requirements
>wouldn't be met because you can't programmatically determine things if there
>are syntax errors. That made me think: isn't validity a necessary but not
>sufficient technique for some of our guidelines? 
>
>I propose to delete the requirement for validity from our guideines and
>instead list it as a necessary but not sufficient technique for all the
>success criteria that require something can be 'programmatically
>determined'. I think this would solve many of the problems:
>
>* We do not require it in the normative section (the guidelines), which
>prevents legal actions against websites that are accessible but do not
>validate because they used an attribute that isn't defined in the specs.
>
>* We limit our guidelines to things that clearly cause accessibility
>problems when violated, which makes the document more believable. Since
>validity falls into the category of 'how to do this' this is put in the
>techniques. 
>
>* We stimulate using other W3C standards and emphasize the importance of
>validity without using WCAG as a platform for other agendas such as the
>promotion of valid code. 
>
>Any thoughts?
>
>Yvette Hoitink
>Heritas, Enschede, the Netherlands
>E-mail: y.p.hoitink@heritas.nl
>WWW: http://www.heritas.nl 
>
>
>
>
>
>  
>

Received on Monday, 7 November 2005 16:08:44 UTC