- From: Christopher R. Maden <crism@exemplary.net>
- Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 10:56:09 -0800
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
[David Poehlman] >bruce, I haven't an url, but another postulation. when accessability is >truly integrated into the spec, we won't have to worry about compliance, >we can just validate. I don't believe that that can ever happen. Any document type includes machine-checkable specifications and non-machine-checkable specifications. Most accessibility guidelines fall into the latter category. A machine can check that all <img>s have alt attributes, for example, but it can't (easily) check that the value of the attribute is useful for communicating the author's intent behind the image. Similarly, a computer can't check that the linearization of a valid <table> produces a stream of text that is sensible; these are value judgments best made by a human. There will always be badly-written pages. With sufficient educational efforts, accessibility will be an automatic part of writing well, and only the badly-written pages will be inacessible, but there will always be some. Until true and complete AI comes along, we will have to accept that accessibility depends on good intentions and kicks to the head. -Chris -- Christopher R. Maden, Solutions Architect Exemplary Technologies One Embarcadero Center, Ste. 2405 San Francisco, CA 94111
Received on Wednesday, 19 January 2000 13:53:53 UTC