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Thread: css off
Number of posts in this thread: 10 (In chronological order)
From: Despain, Dallas
Date: Tue, Aug 25 2009 6:00PM
Subject: css off
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Hi,
Section 1194.22 (d) Of the section508 guidelines say that
"Documents shall be organized so they are readable without requiring an associated style sheet."
I thought that the spirit of this law is to make sure that the reading order is correct regardless of stylesheet? Our QA department is taking it literally and testing functionality of our pages with css off (using the "disable styles" function of the wave toolbar)
This is causing problems because
We are using web2.0 style dialogs in our application similar to these:
http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/examples/container/container-ariaplugin_clean.html
JAWS respects and doesn't announce things with display:none applied, which I think is pretty much essential to designing web 2.0 pages.
When you turn styles off in that page, it's hard to navigate because the dialog content shows up inline with the rest of the content and it's hard to tell where the dialogs begin and where they end.
What do you guys think? Is it reasonable to expect these types of dialog to work and make sense with css off? I didn't see an equivalent wcag2.0 "css off" requirement except perhaps it can be implied form 1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence, and 2.4.3 focus order.
Is this Section 1194.22 (d) an outdated guideline?
Thanks,
Dallas
From: Chris Hoffman
Date: Tue, Aug 25 2009 8:20PM
Subject: Re: css off
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Hi Dallas,
I see two issues here. The first is how much authority Section 508
should have over modern Web applications. Section 508 was drafted long
before folks started turning divs into dialog boxes and pulling in
resources with Ajax and JSON-P, so maybe we shouldn't expect it to
apply, especially if we start distinguishing "Web pages" from "Web
applications". Section 508 can still reign over the pages, while newer
standards like WCAG-2 and ARIA can be used for compliance for
applications.
One caveat that comes with that approach is that Section 508 _also_
governs computer applications (albeit in a different subsection than
the one that covers Web pages), so that calling what you've developed
an application instead of a page doesn't necessarily get you off the
hook for compliance.
The second issue is whether 1192.22(d) (saying that a page should be
readable with CSS turned off) is achievable with a reasonable amount
of effort in a modern Web application. I think that it is. There is no
reason that divs that will be used as dialog boxes can't be included
in the document in positions and an order that makes logical sense, or
even be kept as separate pages that get pulled in with Ajax requests.
Getting it all to work may take some experimentation and a bit of
unorthodox coding (especially if you are using a CMS), but it would be
well worth it.
Why?
First, just because JAWS 10 has ARIA support doesn't mean that every
other assistive technology application out there supports it. I'm
willing to bet that there are plenty of well-aged screen readers out
there in the field (WebAIM's survey results notwithstanding; I have a
feeling they were skewed somewhat by the audience), and to them, a
javascript-powered dialog box looks just like any other div.
Second, there's that oft-talked-about group of people who browse with
Javascript turned off (actually I work with one, and he's a Web
developer [grin]), screen readers or not. Their dialogs look like
divs, too.
And finally, suppose I want to print a page to read later, complete
with all its attachments and extra bits and pieces. My ink jet doesn't
do modal windows yet, so it would be great if everything I printed was
in an order that made sense.
Chris
On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 7:56 PM, Despain, Dallas< = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Hi,
> Section 1194.22 (d) Of the section508 guidelines say that
> "Documents shall be organized so they are readable without requiring an associated style sheet."
>
> I thought that the spirit of this law is to make sure that the reading order is correct regardless of stylesheet? Our QA department is taking it literally and testing functionality of our pages with css off (using the "disable styles" function of the wave toolbar)
>
> This is causing problems because
> We are using web2.0 style dialogs in our application similar to these:
> http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/examples/container/container-ariaplugin_clean.html
>
> JAWS respects and doesn't announce things with display:none applied, which I think is pretty much essential to designing web 2.0 pages.
>
> When you turn styles off in that page, it's hard to navigate because the dialog content shows up inline with the rest of the content and it's hard to tell where the dialogs begin and where they end.
>
> What do you guys think? Is it reasonable to expect these types of dialog to work and make sense with css off? I didn't see an equivalent wcag2.0 "css off" requirement except perhaps it can be implied form 1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence, and 2.4.3 focus order.
>
> Is this Section 1194.22 (d) an outdated guideline?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Dallas
>
>
>
From: Despain, Dallas
Date: Tue, Aug 25 2009 10:00PM
Subject: Re: css off
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Chris,
Thank you for your very well thought out response.
I agree that section 508 does not apply to web 2.0 technologies very well and agree with the technicality that this fact still doesn't get us off the hook. Really, we won't be off the hook until section 508 gets updated because we have government clients, so we want to comply with it first.
To your next point, I agree, it is reasonable to ask that dialogs be included in the document in an order that makes sense. The problem I have when CSS is off is that the dialog trigger(the link or button that launches the dialog) is present and then the dialog content is present directly below.
For Example, say a "log in" link launches a dialog containing two text input fields, "username" and "password" and two buttons, the submit button labeled "log in" and a "cancel" button. The document order goes "Log In link" "Username edit" "Password edit" "Login button" "cancel button". When you read this with css off it's confusing. Why is there a link that says "login" and a button that also says "login"? What's the "cancel" button even for? There's no change in context which always accompanies a dialog.
Incidentally, I ditched the ARIA plugin for dialogs, so perhaps I linked to a bad example for my purposes here. We did some accessibility usability testing, and none of our 5 participants used JAWS 10 and the aria techniques used don't work for ie8 and JAWS, so I have been enhancing them with more traditional methods like managing focus well and using off-screen text to announce the change in context.
We've had to concede to making javascript required though. :(
I'm willing to give up all my css except display:none - that seems reasonable to me :)
Thanks,
Dallas
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Sun, Aug 30 2009 11:20AM
Subject: Re: css off
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Despain, Dallas wrote:
> Section 1194.22 (d) Of the section508 guidelines say that
> "Documents shall be organized so they are readable without requiring
> an associated style sheet."
That's a good rule, though not extensive enough. For real accessibility, as
opposed to meeting some "rules" or "standards", a document should also have
essentially the same content with or without a style sheet.
> I thought that the spirit of this law is to make sure that the
> reading order is correct regardless of stylesheet?
I don't think so. Your formulation postulates that there _is_ "the correct
reading order". This may or may not be true, for a document as a whole or
for parts thereof. For example, if you use CSS to place navigation bar last
in non-graphic rendering, you may well actually improve accessibility by
this change of reading order (since e.g. in aural rendering, users probably
prefer to avoid hearing the navigation menu items at the start of each and
every page). On the other hand, if switching CSS on and off changes the
order of things (that aren't in a random order) in unintended and confusing
ways, then you surely have an accessibility problem.
Moreover, the rule really speaks of other things. There are so many things
you can do in CSS that it is easy to create pages that look OK when CSS is
on and fail miserably when it is not. Sadly enough, CSS is even used for
doing content selection that should be performed server-side. There are
sites and services that don't work at all with CSS disabled.
This - and accessibility as a whole - is much more than just being "JAWS
compatible". (And "JAWS compability" isn't even an acceptable criterion.
Rather, JAWS itself is something that needs to be evaluated from
accessibility perspective.)
There a lots of reasons why people may surf with CSS off. Cf. to my "CSS
Caveats (new edition)", http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/css-caveats.html
For example, a person might have vision or cognition problems that make
"normal" viewing of web pages very difficult to him, due to widespread use
of tiny fonts, bright colors, insufficient color contrast, etc. Switching
CSS off can be very useful then. Many poorly designed pages become
inaccessible in new ways, but the odds are that they were inaccessible
already.
In fact, people with special needs may really need a viewing mode where
author style sheets are ignored but a user style sheet designed for the
user's personal needs is enforced. This is even more demanding than simple
"no CSS", but roughly speaking we can say that if a page works without any
CSS, it also works with a well-designed user style sheet.
> Our QA department
> is taking it literally and testing functionality of our pages with
> css off (using the "disable styles" function of the wave toolbar)
I think they are doing the right thing, as regards to testing compliance to
the rule you quoted. I hope they go further the way I described and also
check whether the content shown in non-CSS rendering, in addition to being
readable, is essentially identical with the CSS-enabled rendering. (By
"essential" I mean that you could, for example, use CSS to add explanatory
symbols and texts that may help but are not mandatory for correct
understanding of the content.)
> This is causing problems because
> We are using web2.0 style dialogs in our application
Calling them web2.0 style does not change what they are and what they imply.
> similar to these:
> http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/examples/container/container-ariaplugin_clean.html
I'm painfully aware of such approaches, and they are very wrong from
accessibility point of view.
For example, accessing that page on a normal browser with CSS off (easiest
to do in Firefox), I see things like
"Info
Your changes have been saved.
Close"
which make no sense in the context, so they violate the cited rule - the
content is not only different from CSS-styled content but also mumbo-jumbo.
> JAWS respects and doesn't announce things with display:none applied,
> which I think is pretty much essential to designing web 2.0 pages.
If that's what web 2.0 essentially is - and I doubt that somewhat - then we
really need to stay away from web 2.0.
> When you turn styles off in that page, it's hard to navigate
And the page becomes rather incomperehensible, at least in part.
> Is it reasonable to expect these types of
> dialog to work and make sense with css off?
Sense that question does not make. The question is: Are such dialog
implementations accessible? The correct answer is "No".
> I didn't see an
> equivalent wcag2.0 "css off" requirement
So what? Section 508, WCAG 1.0, and WCAG 2.0 are three different beasts, all
with both serious drawbacks and some very good points. Unless you are forced
to do so by law or boss or contract, don't use any of them as a rulebook,
but... well... rather like a guideline, to be taken seriously but to be
ignored when it does not really serve accessibility.
> Is this Section 1194.22 (d) an outdated guideline?
No. It is too limited (does not pose strong enough requirements), but that's
a different thing. You can't wipe away rules just because they make your
options more limited. That's what rules are supposed to do.
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
From: Despain, Dallas
Date: Wed, Sep 02 2009 12:45PM
Subject: Re: css off
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Sorry, I forgot to check this list. Thanks for all your comments everyone. It's obvious there are a lot of different interpretations here. We'll just have to do our best and call everything out in our VPAT.
Interesting to note though... Since I sent this message I've found the following:
http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/refresh/report/#81
which makes it sound like TEITAC is recommending dropping Section 1194.22 (d)
Dallas
From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Wed, Sep 02 2009 1:20PM
Subject: Re: css off
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The TEITAC committee's intent was to make sure that the language that was being recommended addressed the fundamental issue, which is a correct reading order. So 1194.22d is not being dropped, but the language is suggested to be modified.
This report is not the final updated Section 508, BTW, just what the TEITAC committee recommended to the access board. A draft will be out in the coming months and we're all eager to see what the new text looks like. For now, if you need to comply with Section 508 you need to worry about the original version...
Thanks,
AWK
Andrew Kirkpatrick
Senior Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe Systems
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
From: Despain, Dallas
Date: Wed, Sep 02 2009 2:05PM
Subject: Re: css off
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Andrew,
Thank you very much. I agree that we'll have to meet section 508 for now. You're right, The css off rule should really be about reading order. So long term perhaps we can rely on css and be accessible! That was what I was trying to find out when I first asked my question about web2.0 dialogs and css off. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Dallas
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Thu, Sep 03 2009 12:45PM
Subject: Re: css off
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Despain, Dallas wrote:
> The css off rule should really be about reading order.
Why? I saw no good arguments for that. It's a very limited view on
accessibility.
> So long term perhaps we can rely on css and be accessible!
Only for odd values for "accessible".
> That was what I was trying to find out when I first asked my question
> about web2.0 dialogs and css off. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Are you really interested in accessibility, or in complying with some
"accessibility rules" (as interpreted rather arbitrarily)?
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
From: Despain, Dallas
Date: Fri, Sep 04 2009 12:55PM
Subject: Re: css off
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Hi Yucca,
I guess I just thought that if TEITAC says "Style sheets are well-supported. What is needed instead is a provision on reading order" (http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/refresh/report/#81)
Then that's the argument for it. Technologies change, and if AT supports style sheets well, why not use them as part of a well thought-out, Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust accessible offering designed for real people who want access to information on the web?
I'm not sure why my interest in accessibility is being questioned. Isn't that why I'm on this list? I am interested in all people being able to participate in the incredible potential that the web has to offer whether they are using assistive technology or not. I've been building web sites and working to make them accessible for 8 years. I want to see the web move forward and accessibility with it. The web is no longer just a collection of links to documents containing text. I want to see us implement technologies that allow us to build richer and richer accessible internet applications designed with the user in mind.
Yucca, you and I may have a difference of opinion, but we are on the same team.
Dallas
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Fri, Sep 04 2009 2:20PM
Subject: Re: css off
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Despain, Dallas wrote:
> I guess I just thought that if TEITAC says "Style sheets are
> well-supported. What is needed instead is a provision on reading
> order" (http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/refresh/report/#81)
> Then that's the argument for it.
It's a poor argument, based only some organization's claim, which in turn is
false - style sheet support has been poor for a very long time, and still
isn't really good.
More importantly, it misses all the points made so often about the idea that
style sheets were meant to be, and are in reality, just optional
presentational suggestions. It's part of the very idea that they can be
switched off or overridden.
> Technologies change, and if AT
> supports style sheets well, why not use them as part of a well
> thought-out, Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust
> accessible offering designed for real people who want access to
> information on the web?
>
> I'm not sure why my interest in accessibility is being questioned.
My question "Are you really interested in accessibility, or in complying
with some 'accessibility rules' (as interpreted rather arbitrarily)?" was
based on your references to accessibility rules and purported authorities,
instead of discussing the real impact of various approaches.
So, for example, if someone says that he can only view web pages with a
special style sheet designed for him, overriding most if not all of author
style sheets, are you going to throw the argument "style sheets are
well-supported" at him?
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/