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

[Barry McMullin]

On Tue, 9 Jan 2007, Tim Culhane wrote:

> Most  screen readers now  "remember"  the place in the page  you were at
> when you left it,  i.e.   By following a link.  Thus the back button will
> normally return you back to the original place on the page.
>
> However, in my experience,  this sort of functionality is notoriously
> unreliable, and you  are just as likely to be returned to the top of the
> last page as to the place where you left it.

I take this point ... but, in my view, that is a purely client
side issue.  That is, individual users should be able to choose
for themselves whether they want links opening in new windows or
not.  It's perfectly OK for the author to *suggest* open in a new
window, as long as nothing *relies* on this.  Assuming that to be
so, then there is (to my mind) very little to choose between
using the target attribute or using javascript as the mechanism
for advising the user agent of this suggestion; and so I would
still tend to abandon the use of target (and with it, the use of
HTML Transitional, if that was the only transitional feature
still in use).

That all said ... pragmatically, if the *only* question mark
about the Double-A conformance of a page was that it is used the
target attribute for the specific purpose of suggesting a new
window (and assuming that the user is "informed" of this, per
10.1, and that that page would otherwise validate to a Strict
doctype) then no, I would not insist that it should still be
regarded as failing WCAG Double-A conformance.

Best - Barry.