RE: New version of Guidelines

I won't say that my sites are perfectly accessible.  I have never checked
them with Bobby.  I have taken accessibility into heavy consideration while
writing.  I suspect that the guidelines have caused your pages to have
errors for good reason, though.  If the pages are not broken and there is a
problem with the guidelines then it should be stated what the problem is.

>My site basically is a very simple site and it goes in the direction
>that a text version will not be needed.

In my experience, a text version is never needed when you adhere to the
recommendations.  HTML is perfectly capable of rendering as text-only when
you use it well.  Lynx is a good test.  It renders HTML as a good text-based
UA should.

>browser makers NOT the website authors.

You follow the specs and guidelines, the browser folks follow the specs and
guidelines then it will work every time.  Either one of you stray and it
breaks in ways you rarely predict.  It is everyone's responsibility to make
sure the web is accessible.  I will say that some of the browser folks are
not doing the best job in fostering accessibility.  The web writers are not
innocent, though.  Writing bad HTML documents is just as big of a problem as
writing a bad HTML interpreter.  There are millions of people writing bad
HTML.  There are only a few people writing bad browsers.

Here is a simple browser accessibility problem with the big browsers.
Why don't images render as the alt text when the images are disabled or
unavailable?  They render as an empty box with microscopic little text in
one corner.  An image inside of a heading, on Lynx, renders the alt text as
if it were plain text within a heading.  Is this not something that would be
logical?  At least as an accessibility option.

And, why do so many people misuse or not use the alt text?  How many people
have you seen put "Hey stupid, turn on your images so you can see them" as
the alt text?  Tell me that isn't the author's responsibility.

,David Norris

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Received on Friday, 17 April 1998 23:50:50 UTC