[Irl-dean] Opinions: HTML Transitional and WCAG Double-A

[Joshue O Connor]

> Offers of candidate "Transitional-only"
> features, that don't intrinsically imply violation of any WCAG P1
> or P2 checkpoint, will be greatfully appreciated!

I don't know if they will be considered implying a violation of _any_
guideline but just to throw the ball in the air, here is a list of
deprecated XHTML 1.0 attributes from the W3C site [1}.

<cite>

XHTML 1.0 has deprecated the name attribute of the a, applet, form,
frame, iframe, img, and map elements, and it will be removed from XHTML
in subsequent versions.

XHTML 1.0, the name attribute of these elements is formally deprecated,
and will be removed in a subsequent version of XHTML.

The isindex element is deprecated in favor of the input element.

</cite>

Now there is another debate - Just because something has been deprecated
does not mean that it did not work - and maybe should _still_ be
supported - as long as a developer chooses the correct doc type.  To
illustrate, the use of name and id attributes come to mind here. Earlier
versions of screen readers do not support the id attribute but you could
include both when marking up form controls using XHTML 1.x transitional,
so if a screen reader did not recognise the id attribute, it would
recognise the name attribute. See the section C.8 on Fragment identifiers.

How does this translate in the real world (lest we forget)? This means
that using an XHTML 1.x transitional doc type allows legacy user agents
to be able to find form elements on a page accessible, where if a strict
XHTML doc type was used, their older screen reader would not know what
the id attribute was, and it could render the form on the page unusable.

These user agents can be very expensive, an €800 upgrade is a lot if you
are on a disability benefit.

Josh

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-xhtml1-20000126/


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