Re: accessify.com's review of RNIB relaunch

Should we not encourage developers to write well-formed code.

It is similar to saying it is ok to produce written material if some of 
the print is smudged or a page is upside down. Is it really fair on the 
people we are producing content for.

In accessibility we are working towards getting things as "good as we 
can for the greatest number of users". And in reality, who has an XHTML 
browser that will not display an XHTML page correctly. The reason that 
badly formed XHTML still displays fine in browsers is for the allowances 
originally made for bad HTML coding. If we think that poor mark up is 
fine then lets open the floodgates to a horde of Front Page sites and 
build sites that don't hold up across browsers. That is not accessibility.




Kynn Bartlett wrote:

>
>
> 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 17:03:01 UTC