Re: SVG Replacing HTML Could be Accessibility Disaster

Dave, I would strongly encourage tyou to read the draft "accessibiility
features in SVG" - http://www.w3.org/1999/09/SVG-access - which is written
under the assumption that a lot of real content will be presented in SVG. It
could indeed be an accesibility disaster if badly done, but it could be a big
step forwards as well.

Charles McCN

On Fri, 14 Jul 2000, Dave  J Woolley wrote:

  Looking at the archives of this list, it seems that SVG is
  seen as a good thing, but looking at the SVG list, it seems
  to me that many of the potential users (and industry commentators)
  see it as a potential replacement for HTML.
  
  As a replacement, I think people see it as being a much
  better page description language than HTML (HTML is not supposed
  to be one, but many accessibility problems are the result of 
  people pretending that it is).
  
  Such uses of SVG would cause the same sorts of issues as does PDF,
  and Flash.
  
  My impression is that accessibility features in the standard are
  mainly there to pay lip service, and that the SVG tool developers
  are approaching it from a graphics presentation point of view, not
  from an accessibility or logical structure point of view.
  
  I get the impression that those people in W3C interested in 
  accessibility see it as a better graphics format than bitmaps and
  are failing to see the direction that it is really going, which is
  against the whole web philosophy, and very presentation oriented.
  

--
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053
Postal: GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001,  Australia

Received on Friday, 14 July 2000 09:45:48 UTC