[Irl-dean] WCAG 2.0

[Mark Magennis]

Hi Elaine,

I haven't been following this discussion (too technical for me) but I
would have thought there may be an issue about putting people into a
"lowest common denominator" situation by forcing them to follow
standards, not only when they are sensible and effective, but also when
they are unnecessary and restrictive. For example, if you want to use
Flash for a banner, you have to add an EMBED tag for cross browser
compatibility. But then the code is not valid since EMBED is not part of
the HTML specification. However, not allowing someone to use a Flash
banner for this reason is rather harsh and does not necessarily enhance
the accessibility or usability of their site. It may, in fact, reduce
it.

There are probably many more and better examples of how requiring
validity restricts functionality or creativity and, whilst I fully agree
with your reasoning about why standards compliance is a good thing, we
have to consider the "real world" (don't you just hate that place :-)
where web designers and content creators are often of an artistic bent
and are reluctant to accept creative restrictions, especially where they
are to do with following the letter of a law in situations where it
clearly does not further the spirit behind it.

I predict this one will run and run. 

Mark

> -----Original Message-----
> From: irl-dean-admin at list.eeng.dcu.ie 
> [mailto:irl-dean-admin at list.eeng.dcu.ie] On Behalf Of 
> Elaine.McGlynn at dcu.ie
> Sent: 19 July 2005 16:30
> To: irl-dean at list.eeng.dcu.ie
> Subject: [Irl-dean] WCAG 2.0
> 
> 
> Hi all, 
> 
> Guideline 4.1 ("Use technologies according to specification") 
> of the WCAG
> 2.0 working draft is under a lot of discussion at the moment. 
> There are a
> number of arguments for and against whether "validity" should 
> be at Level
> 1 or Level 2 in the guideline. Details of this discussion can 
> be found here:
>  
> http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2005/06/validity-accessibility.html
> 
> My Opinion: 
> WCAG 1.0 included a guideline which stated that authors 
> should "Create documents
> that validate to published formal grammars". This was a 
> Priority 2 checkpoint.
> WCAG 2.0 is designed as an improvement on WCAG 1.0 and should 
> demonstrate
> how the Web and its authors have progressed in those few 
> years since the
> WCAG 1.0 guidelines were produced. Web authors should be 
> fully aware how
> to produce valid HTML websites; even if it means rendering 
> the poor HTML
> content produced from some authoring tools to produce valid 
> code. Until more
> efficient authoring tools are developed, it is the author's 
> responsibility
> to ensure that standards and specifications for HTML code are 
> adhered to.
> 
> 
> I believe that if the WCAG 2.0 guideline 4.1 is placed at 
> Level 2, we are
> somehow saying that "lazy" coding is accepted. Note that the 
> mission of the
> WAI is to support the W3C commitment "to lead the Web to its 
> full potential
> [including] promoting a high degree of usability for people 
> with disabilities."
> Assistive technologies rely on "accessible" websites, but why 
> make it more
> difficult for them by accepting poor coding practices, which 
> in turn lead
> to invalid webpages.  The following argument is taken from 
> the WAI "Validity
> and Accessibility" article: 
> 
> <quote>
> "Last week I gave an example of a complex data table marked 
> up with headers
> and id - apparently OK at first sight. But as the values of 
> id attribute
> were not unique on the page, the page failed validity test. 
> Screen readers
> and self voicing browsers did not forgive this lapse and did 
> not associate
> data cells and header cells as expected.
> How would one regard this problem? "A little problem" from a 
> validity standpoint?
> Accessibility eval tools do not check for validity problems 
> that result in
> accessibility  problems. So if one does not validate the page 
> before running
> it through an accessibility eval tool, the problem will go 
> undetected. It
> is high time that validity be taken more seriously. It is 
> only in authoring
> Web content invalid code or syntactically  incorrect code is 
> acceptable.
> Other programming languages do not allow even a missing comma 
> or semi colon,
> etc. The same standards need to be enforced here now."
> Sailesh Panchang
> Deque Systems www.deque.com
> Reston VA
> </quote>
> 
> Why leave any room open for errors like the above? I believe 
> that validity
> and accessibility go hand in hand. Why compromise when we 
> have the power
> now to get it right? Validity should be at Level 1 in WCAG 
> 2.0 guideline
> 4.1. What do you think?..
> 
> Kind regards,
> Elaine
> 
> 
> Elaine McGlynn
> Support-EAM Project,
> Electronic Eng. Dept.,
> D.C.U.
> 
> Email: elaine.mcglynn at dcu.ie
> Ph: 0876344144
> 
> 
> 
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