RE: Using htlm editors to produce clean code?

We had a similar problem at RMIT when I was the webmaster. I reported to 
the Publications manager, who had difficulty understanding the issues. 
When he was required to make a presentation at another University using a 
slowish modem link he got the message. Business people learn it in about 
5 minutes - look at a couple of typical sites, then clear the cache, turn 
off images, and go again.

Or do a presentation: get a computer, lynx, and a projector, and look at
www.melbourne.org or whatever your favourite example is. Most people are 
not so stupid that they do not understand.

Most people, in my experience, can then be convinced of the necessity to 
learn some simple tricks of HTML. KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid - can go a
very long way towards making a website accessible.

The big problem seems to be that as web-designers we present ourselves as
masters of some arcane and difficult art which mere mortals need machines
to comprehend for them. Fortunately for those with that point of view,
many mere mortals have a slight fear of learning, which can be tweaked
easily. This is especially handy for those web-designers who are 
themselves very much less than masters (I do not mean people here, who 
are in my experience proficient, but I am sure we have all run across 
such people)

Fortunately for what we are trying to achieve in the WAI, this is a load 
of cobblers.

Charles McCathieNevile

On Mon, 18 May 1998, Kynn Bartlett wrote:
[snip]
> While I understand the difference between "HTML that we can see
> and looks fine to us" and "valid, accessible HTML", it's pretty
> hard to sell the concept to non-technical folks who can look at a
> web page and say, "that works on my Netscape -- what's wrong with
> it?"  It's doubly harder if I have to convince them to change away
> from a word processor that works, for dubious reasons such as
> "this doesn't pass validation."

Received on Tuesday, 19 May 1998 04:27:43 UTC