A new approach to guidelines

There is a beginning at http://saltimbocca.srl.rmit.edu.au/wai/mygl.html

The basis is to identify each HTML element, and outline the issues 
raised. This was something I knocked up to demonstrate the idea in half 
an hour, not a finished product, but I would welcome feedback.

4 Points already raised:
1 It is incomplete. Yes - I have only worked on it for half an hour on 
Friday. If it seems worthwhile it should be relatively easy to complete

2 It does not cover all issues. There are some accessibility issues which 
do not relate to elements (or even attributes, which will be included in 
a finished version). An example is Sue's recent question about 
positioning navigation links.

3 It is no help to somebody who does not know how HTML works, but only 
uses an editor like FrontPage or Netscape Composer. This is true. 
Unfortunately the current state of authoring tools like FrontPage is that 
they cannot be used to produce accessible code unless you understand 
HTML. Fortunately HTML is a very easy language to learn. Even more 
fortunately, I happen to have a set of tutorials to which I can point, as 
well as the HTML 4.0 Specification itself. My recommendation to designers 
who want to produce accessible pages is fairly simple - if you can't 
write your own code, learn to, or switch professions. Unfortunately for 
the present I don't see any alternatives - talk to the people designing 
Authoring Tools. Or accept pages which just use Paragraphs, Headings, 
well-formed links and images with appropriate d-linking and alt text - 
anyone can learn to do those accessibly in an hour. If Layout is what you 
want, then knowledge is what you need. (enough rant)

4 These guidelines are not a substitute for the full guidelines. Correct. 
They are an additional information resource. The full guidelines specify 
the principles which must be applied. These guidelines provide an 
approach to applying these principles.


Cheers
Charles McCathieNevile

Received on Saturday, 18 July 1998 23:51:30 UTC