Re: Accessibility in XHTML 2.0 Draft

HI,
  You've given some really good idea's, I've included some possible 
improvements below.

Seth Honeycutt wrote:

 > To help improve accessibility to web content... I suggest using the 
<section>
 > element to block-up sections of XHTML code that can be given 
attributes such
 > as id, title, and summary. These sections of code on a web page can 
then be
 > displayed separately...  For example, the code for a section could 
look something
 > like this:
 >
 > <section id="sitenav" title="Site Navigation" summary="Navigation 
links for our website." >
 >     <p>
 >     </p>
 > </section>

  I like this idea.  When I first read this, I thought: why not just use 
the <h> element inside the section?, then I realised that the <h> 
element could be optional, or there could be several, then which one 
would be selected.  Maybe the first could be selected if the title 
attribute was left out, as a fall back mechanism.

 > A few extra things that you might consider is allowing for a header 
and footer to be declared in the <head> of the document that would 
insert code before and after the code in a section when a section is 
displayed on a screen by itself.  This would allow for navigational 
links and/or a site header graphic (or for small ads on sites that rely 
on advertising for their free content) to be displayed along with any 
section that is displayed by itself in a browser.  A possible example is 
below:
 >
 > <head>
 >     <section  header="index.php?header" footer="index.php?footer" />
 > </head>
 >

  If the header was to be in an external file, then I think using the 
existing <link/> element would be more appropriate.
  <link href="mainheader.html" rel="header" type="application/xhtml+xml"/>
  <link href="mainfooter.html" rel="footer" type="application/xhtml+xml"/>

If a different header was required for different media, then the media 
attribute could be used.
  <link href="printheader.html" rel="header" 
type="application/xhtml+xml" media="print"/>
  <link href="printfooter.html" rel="footer" 
type="application/xhtml+xml" media="print"/>

Alternate headers could be defined just like alternate style sheets by 
using the title attribute.
  <link href="altheader.html" rel="header" type="application/xhtml+xml" 
title="altheader"/>
  <link href="altfooter.html" rel="footer" type="application/xhtml+xml" 
title="altfooter"/>

Or, if the author wished to include the header and footer within the 
document, rather than linking, just like <style/> can be embedded or linked.
<header id="embeddedheader">
    <p>header content</p>
</header>
<footer id="embeddedfooter">
    <p>footer content</p>
</footer>
<footer id="embeddedfooter" title="Alternate Embedded Footer">
    <p>footer content</p>
</footer>


 > If you want to deviate from the default header or footer
 > when coding a section you can just place a header or footer attribute 
with that
 > section.  For example you might place something in the code like this:
 >
 > <section id="sitenav" title="Site Navigation" summary="Navigation 
links for our website." header="index.php?alternateheader" 
footer="index.php?alternatefooter">

  The header and footer could be IDREFs (or left as URIs) to point to 
the alternate headers and footers specified in the header

<section id="sitenav" title="Site Navigation" summary="Navigation links 
for our website." header="#altheader" footer="#altfooter">

  I don't know how it could be handled if an alternate header was 
required for different media.  Perhaps a list of IDREFs so the UA could 
pick the most appropriate?

 > You could also just specify that you don't want any header (void) for 
this section (if you defined a default header for all sections in 
<head>) by saying something like:
 >
 > <section id="sitenav" title="Site Navigation" summary="Navigation 
links for our website." header="">

  Yes. I like that. (also, footer="" for the footer)


 > Another consideration is to have an optional <meta> tag in the <head> 
of the document that would point to a simple web page that ... could be 
more graphical than the general outline of the sections generated and 
shown by the browser otherwise...  For example you might have a <meta> 
tag like in <head> like:
 >
 > <head>  
 > <meta name="navigate" content="navigate.html" />
 > </head>

   Again, why not just use the existing <link/> element.
  <link href="navigate.html" rel="contents" type="application/xhtml+xml"/>


 > One last extra thing to possibly consider is a way to show an 
alternative to a section if it is displayed alone on a small screen 
device, etc.  You may consider using the 'src' attribute to specify an 
external file containing code for an alternate view if the code that is 
displayed on a full computer screen would look rather bad by itself or 
on a small screen.  For example, maybe something like:
 >
 > <section id="sitenav" title="Site Navigation" summary="Navigation 
links for our website."  src="sitenav.php?">
 >     <p>
 >     </p>
 > </section>

  Isn't CSS designed to give alternate views and layouts?


 > Full screen computer browsers will skip over the <section> tag and 
show the content in between, but if viewed separately on a mobile device 
it will use the code from the file in the 'src' attribute.

  This wouldn't work for alternate content.  See section 6.6. Embedding 
Attribute Collection in the current draft (6 May 2003)

"This collection causes the contents of a remote resource to be embedded 
in the document in place of the element's content... If accessing the 
remote resource fails, for whatever reason (network unavailable, no 
resource available at the URI given, inability of the user agent to 
process the type of resource) the content of the element must be 
processed instead."

  Thus, providing a src attribute would cause the contents of the 
section to be overidden with the content specified in the src attribute.

Received on Friday, 31 October 2003 20:30:52 UTC