Reporting non-conformant contant throughout the WAI and W3C documents

Dear Editors,

I am reporting a violation of WCAG 2.0 SC 1.3.1 and 1.4.4 throughout
your documents.  I have provided two examples.  All of your
programming language code uses visual indent to convey meaning. And
200% enlargement is not usable starting with 12pt font, approximately
the critical font size for visual readers with normal.

Current practice in computer literature places programming language
code in PRE elements.  1) There are several problems with reading this
format in large print:  It does not enlarge to 200% without spilling
off the page. 2) The semantic meaning of indentation is expressed
visually but cannot be problematically determined (the heuristic would
involve counting spaces and / or tab characters and guessing the
author's formula for assigning tabs to spaces).

The meaning of indentation is "sub-block".  That is the indented text
indicates children in the syntax (and parse) tree of the program.
This semantic content is lost to all but visual readers with normal
vision.

So, the WAI literature has wherever it uses code.  I have found in
AIRA Documents and the Techniques Document.

Here is one in WCAG Techniques: C6 Positioned content, Example 1
(www.w3.org/TR/2012/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20120103/C6).

In ARIA The Roles Model, 5.2.7.4. Text Alternative Computation Example
#1: (http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/roles#supportedState)

A clever user can change the style on PRE elements to wrap after a
fashion, but indentation is lost.  This practice does not conform to
WCAG 2.0 Level AA.

There is a fix for this.  The CODE element of HTML is currently
semantically flimsy.  It could be transformed into another list type.
It would involve adding nothing new to HTML, just changing the
semantics of CODE.  LI could be used if one does not want to take two
years introducing a new element.  Historically lines of code were
called "listing items".

Sincerely Wayne Dick, EOWG Member in Good Standing

Received on Saturday, 29 September 2012 18:07:10 UTC