Re: Serving generic XML (was: storing info in XSL-FO: new issue?)

Andrew wrote:
> In a message dated 19/08/2002 07:59:28 GMT Daylight Time, kynn@idyllmtn.com 
> writes:
> > There are serious accessibility problems with sending "pure XML" even
> > if you send a style sheet along with it.
> > At the current time, it is not advisable at all to send "pure XML".  
> Kynn,
> Can you please either summarise the key "serious accessibility problems" or 
> point me to a URL or three which you think best summarise the 
> technical/architectural issues on this point?

WCAG 1.0, checkpoint 6.1:

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/#gl-new-technologies

6.1 Organize documents so they may be read without style sheets. For 
    example, when an HTML document is rendered without associated 
    style sheets, it must still be possible to read the document.

It is not possible to "read" (understand) arbitrary XML without a
stylesheet; it is (to the UA) a collection of tags without semantics.
(This is different from the case of XHTML, which is not arbitrary
XML.)

XML accessibility guidelines (working draft):

http://www.w3.org/TR/xag.html

This explains many of the issues connected with XML accessibility.  In
reading this document, note that the assumption is that we are NOT dealing
with "arbitrary XML" but rather a schema-based or DTD-based markup
language understood by both the author and the UA.  Why does the XAG
document not address arbitrary XML?  Because it is rather obviously NOT
accessible.

Why?  Because arbitrary XML is, to the UA, worse than simply plain text.
It provides an unknown structure but the user -- especially the user with
special needs -- likely has no way of making sense of that structure in
any rational way.

--Kynn

Received on Monday, 19 August 2002 03:35:56 UTC