Re: accessify.com's review of RNIB relaunch

On Wednesday, June 25, 2003, at 09:37 AM, James Craig wrote:
> I think the only accessibility difference between using valid HTML 
> versus valid XHTML is that XHTML conforms to standard well-formed XML 
> rules and could therefore be used and displayed by /any/ XML parser. 
> The "accessibility" benefit doesn't necessarily relate to people with 
> disabilities but instead just refers to "access for all".

Such as what, though?

XHTML also has the drawback that, if there is a single error, it will
not display in any XHTML browser or XML parser.

Note:  If you have an XHTML document with an error -- say you forgot
to close a tag -- and your browser displays it anyway, your browser
is in VIOLATION of the XML standard.

Any standards-compliant XHTML browser will reject invalid XML, if
you declare your document as XHTML.  HTML is more forgiving and thus
more appropriate for general Web use.  Why would you want to use
XHTML in such a situation?

--Kynn

PS:  Converting from valid HTML to valid XHTML (and thus being
      usable by any XML parser) is trivial.  C.f. HTMLTidy.
--
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                     http://kynn.com
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain                http://idyllmtn.com
Author, CSS in 24 Hours                       http://cssin24hours.com
Inland Anti-Empire Blog                      http://blog.kynn.com/iae
Shock & Awe Blog                           http://blog.kynn.com/shock

Received on Wednesday, 25 June 2003 16:34:58 UTC