[Irl-dean] VICS Submission to W3C on WCAG 2.0

[Joshue O Connor]

Hi Gerry,

Well done to yourself and Natasha. You have made some very good points.
In particular:

> VICS feels that the importance of the use of Headings is not strong enough in the current draft.

This is an important and rather straightforward point, so should be
imparted in a clear manner.

> A visually impaired user frequently cannot discern how elements such as navigation bars, headings, headers, footers, main content, etc are grouped together.

This is in part due to limited semantics. Until HTML 5 (due around 2025)
efforts are being made to address this by adding extra modules (role and
state) to current XHTML DTD's, these are called Live Regions and when
supported (not currently by IE) can provide a lot more information to
the user about the purpose of grouped elements within the page. Gez
wrote a useful summary on Juicy Studio
http://juicystudio.com/article/wai-aria-live-regions.php

The W3 have also produced a quick reference guide which you can see here
http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/ that can be customised to display
techniques for the baseline technologies that you use. Its still not
totally ideal (and for could itself be improved for screen reader use)
but is a step in the right direction.

Good stuff

Josh



********************************************************************

NOTICE: The information contained in this email and any attachments 
is confidential and may be privileged.  If you are not the intended 
recipient you should not use, disclose, distribute or copy any of 
the content of it or of any attachment; you are requested to notify 
the sender immediately of your receipt of the email and then to 
delete it and any attachments from your system.

NCBI endeavours to ensure that emails and any attachments generated 
by its staff are free from viruses or other contaminants.  However, 
it cannot accept any responsibility for any such which are 
transmitted.  We therefore recommend you scan all attachments.

Please note that the statements and views expressed in this email 
and any attachments are those of the author and do not necessarily 
represent the views of NCBI


********************************************************************