RE: Accessibility in SVG

Hi, Anne-

| Quoting Doug Schepers <doug@schepers.cc>:
| > However, I don't feel that the CSS WG has made any efforts 
| at all to 
| > make CSS generically work with other markup languages than HTML, so 
| > the fit with SVG is rather poor.
| 
| Why do you think so? It works rather well for generic XML languages. 

I would be very interested to see you apply this to a real-world generic XML
use case that involves accessibility (which is the context from which you
are extracting this comment).


| The problem comes with languages where content and  
| presentation are mixed, like with MathML and SVG.

... And with HTML. CSS has not changed the fact that HTML is both a
presentation and content markup, it has merely made it possible to separate
them a bit more.


| Also, I do not believe the SVG WG contacted the CSS WG in the 
| beginning to discuss their extensions to CSS. If that would 
| have been the case, some problems would probably never be 
| part of the specification.

Chris Lilly was, IIRC, heavily involved with both SVG and CSS at the
inception of the SVG WG, and continued to be for some time. He is not
particularly shy, so I would be surprised had he not brought up a number of
mutual issues to both WGs. But even if did not, I *have* twice brought up
SVG issues to the CSS WG (one directly involving accessibility regarding
navigation, and one peripherally so as regards colors), and both times SVG
was dismissed as a corner case. In any event, it should be the
responsibility of the CSS WG to make their Spec as generic and broadly
applicable as possible; they should have taken the initiative to consider
other W3C Specs besides HTML.

But ultimately, I don't blame the CSS WG, because I believe that the
problems with melding CSS and SVG are fundamental, and that any attempt to
get them to play nice together is more work than it's worth. Certainly,
certain ideas explored in CSS are worthwhile in an SVG context, but I think
that they could be applied directly in an XML fashion without all the extra
baggage that CSS carries from its essential task of styling HTML.

Regards-
Doug

doug . schepers  @ vectoreal.com
www.vectoreal.com ...for scalable solutions.

Received on Saturday, 17 September 2005 07:05:00 UTC