comments on styles for common spec features [FWD]

---------- Forwarded Message -----------
From: "Gregory J. Rosmaita" <oedipus@hicom.net>
To: "Ian Jacobs" <ij@w3.org>, chairs@w3.org, janina@rednote.net
Cc: "Karl Dubost" <karl+w3c@la-grange.net>, public-forms@w3.org,
public-xhtml2@w3.org, wai-liaison@w3.org, steven.pemberton@cwi.nl
Sent: Fri, 6 Feb 2009 17:59:07 +0000
Subject: Re: Any objections or concerns about styles for common spec 
features?

aloha, ian!

you wrote, quote
> Karl Dubost created a small style sheet for frequent spec 
> features like "examples" and "notes" and "warnings":
> 
> CSS file
>      http://www.la-grange.net/2009/02/04/w3c-tr.css
[skip]
> I am thinking about including them on the TR styles for people 
> to use and would like to hear if there is support for this or 
> concerns. My primary concern would be that the class names 
> conflict with deployed class names, and published specs might 
> experience rendering problems.

i know i am not a chair, but i do have some feedback for you to 
consider about the proposed w3c-tr.css file -- note that the 
comments below are excerpted from the attached file, w3c-tr-gjr.css

GJR comment 1: these styles need to be applied to declarative markup 
elements, such as EM and STRONG, otherwise they are merely 
presentational -- use of EM and STRONG will allow assistive 
technologies to communicate the state of the text as marked, rather 
than applying the style rules to generic elements such as SPAN or 
DIV, unless the SPAN or DIV is annotated by a role attribute

GJR comment 2:  identification of text by color code is poorly 
supported by, albeit very often requested of, assistive technology 
vendors; most AT offers the user the option of filtering and setting 
switches using named colors only; of the AT vendors who have been 
alerted to this, only Orca has taken action to allow a user to filter 
or "skim" for text using color codes

GJR comment 3: although i am a HUGE fan of pseudo-elemental text, it is
not reliably rendered (if at all) by assistive technologies because it 
is the CSS engine which is generating the text and it does not appear 
in the DOM; this is a particular problem for screen-reader users

i hope these observations help, and am willing to work with you on 
the accessibility of the default W3C stylesheets, gregory.
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             Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net
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