Re: PGP MIME Email [was: Re: inaccessible site due to css [was: Re: Politics: Strict Guidelines Considered Harmful]]

Hi

Appologies for sending to the list using PGP MIME, several people have
told me off (off list) for doing this.

I have set up my MUA to send old-style PGP signed messages to this list,
if anyone has a problem with this let me know and I'll try to think of
another way of doing it.

Following is the message that some people won't yet have been able to
read.

Chris

On Tue 19-Dec-2000 at 04:48:59 +0000, Chris Croome wrote:
> Hi
> 
> On Tue 19-Dec-2000 at 08:44:43 -0500, Bailey, Bruce wrote:
> > (2)  Most of use have seen sites that were inaccessible because of the use
> > of <font> and the like.  Can you cite one real-world reference where valid
> > CSS was used but the results decreased accessibility?
> 
> I'm sorry to say that I can :-(
> 
> The AltaVista help pages:
> 
> http://doc.altavista.com/adv_search/ast_haw_index.html
> 
> Valid CSS:
> 
> http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?uri=http://doc.altavista.com/adv_search/ast_haw_index.html&warning=2
> 
> In Netscape 4 in Linux the use of point sizes for the main body of the
> text and the links in the margin makes it totally unreadable (I know
> this is not WAI compliant!).
> 
> When CSS is turned off the main body is readable but the links in the
> margin are not (blue on blue) since the table cells colours are set
> using bgcolor and the links are made white using css. Netscape 3 will
> have this problem as well. 
> 
> If they had used <font color="#FFFFFF"> in the left margin then these
> pages would be even more of an example of CSS making things worse.
> 
> The problem is basically caused by Netscape4 (and especially NN in
> Linux) being totally crap, but I do think it's a case of CSS making a
> site less accessible. 
> 
> I came to the conclusion a while ago that the only sensible thing to do
> with text sizes is not to set them _at all_, not using font tags, not
> using css -- use structural mark-up and leave all the sizes to the user
> agent (apart from print media css where I do use point sizes). 

-- 
Chris Croome <chris@webarchitects.co.uk>
work: http://www.webarchitects.co.uk/
play: http://chris.croome.net/