- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1999 16:59:15 -0400 (EDT)
- To: Charles E Taylor IV <charlet@hubcap.clemson.edu>
- cc: www-amaya@w3.org
Correct - validating to the DTD can be a necessary step, but is usually insufficient (and the rest is often difficult to test automagically.) In fact conformance to the specification implies more than simple syntax validity - for example, HTML 4.0 says that the use of tables for layout is deprecated, but it can be done in a way which is syntactically correct. And also correct that pre 2.1 Amaya allowed AREAs without alt text. They are now mandatory (another example of Amaya demonstrating accessibility in authoring tools ;-) Charles McCN On Wed, 8 Sep 1999, Charles E Taylor IV wrote: On 08-Sep-99 Charles McCathieNevile wrote: > For a lot of users, missing ALT is the single most critical problem in being > able to use a website. That is why it is required by the DTD, and is one > example of why validating to the DTD is as important as working with > browsers. I don't think I entirely agree on this. I've seen a fair portion of sites that *do* use ALT and still make no sense using Lynx. It doesn't help when the image's ALT tag says "image". I don't think there's really a way to validate making sure the tags are actually useful for navigation without having a human do it. (That's why I like Amaya's text view option. I don't even have to whip out Lynx to check and see if my page makes sense in a text-based broswer.) > Another is accessibility to people with disabilities - in many countries this > is a legal requirement for large content providers (in the US for government > and government funded providers. In Australia for people who offer services, > including but not limited to sales, recreation, education, ...) and often > people are usng things other than NS/IE for access. (Hence the work that is > being done to make Amaya itself more accessible, and do things like require > ALTs in images/image map areas... I'm guessing that Amaya pre-2.1 (or possibly even 2.1 - I've edited some of my pages with it, though most were originally created in 2.0) *doesn't* require ALT tags in image maps? That's the only part my Amaya-created pages fail on the validator. --- Charles E. "Rick" Taylor, IV <charlet@clemson.edu> http://orangesherbert.ces.clemson.edu "We got the MRxL, and you got none!" --Charles McCathieNevile mailto:charles@w3.org phone: +1 617 258 0992 http://www.w3.org/People/Charles W3C Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI MIT/LCS - 545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139, USA
Received on Wednesday, 8 September 1999 16:59:17 UTC