Where are guidelines about overuse of <font size> and <table>?

WAI folks,

I recently received a tax publication via U.S. post from

Bernard F. Crowly, Jr.
Acting Commissioner
Massachusetts Department of Revenue
PO Box 7010
Boston, MA 02204

On the back it says

	Instructions for e-filing can be found in this booklet
	by visiting our website at:
	www.state.ma.us/dor

I like to thow paper copies away in favor of online documents,
so I went looking.

The font size was smaller than I was used to; after checking
my client configuration, I went into debug mode and did
a "view source." I was disappointed to find:

===========
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" link="#336633" vlink="#333366"
alink="#663333" topmargin="0" leftmargin="0">
[...]

<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
[...]
<font size="2" face="helvetica,arial">The most
                commonly requested tax publications offered by
                the Department of Revenue can be found below.
[...]
===========

in the source of

Tax Publications
http://www.state.ma.us/dor/publ/publ.htm
Last Modified: Friday, 12 February, 1999 13:41:00 GMT

So in my "SGML cop" habit, and as a taxpaying citizen,
I began to cite them in violation
of the W3C Web Content Guidelines (and perhaps the relevant
U.S. law... can't remember enough to cite it just now.)

I found the feedback address mailto:dor@shore.net
after reading:

"Please note that this e-mail service is intended for comments
about the DOR website only."
http://www.state.ma.us/dor/webmail.htm


Then I started with

WAI Home Page
http://www.w3.org/WAI/

[I suggest a more complete title for that page:
	W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Home Page]


expecting to find things like:

	Don't use <font>; use stylesheets in stead.
	Don't use <tables> for layout
	Don't set the background color without setting
		the foreground color and vice versa.

But I can't find them stated plainly. Help?

The closest I found was
"5. Use markup and style sheets properly. "
http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-WAI-PAGEAUTH/#gl-structure-presentation

but I didn't see anything about the <font> tag in particular.

One other tidbit from "view source":

	<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 2.0">

I reviewed the online information about this product:

FrontPage 98 - Overview
http://www.microsoft.com/products/prodref/571_ov.htm?RLD=29

but I could not find an mechanism for online product feedback.

Clues?

-- 
Dan W Connolly
http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Saturday, 6 March 1999 15:19:55 UTC