WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Validation equals Accessibility?

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Apr 17, 2007 4:40AM

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007, Elizabeth J. Pyatt wrote:

> Most problems with valid code still not being accessible deal with
> color contrast (black-on-black is valid code, but poor contrast).

Not at all. You have an _extremely_ narrow view on accessibility, if you
think that way. Color contrast is just one of the many features that may
cause problems, and when it causes problems, it's probably poor general
usability (hurting most people) rather than accessibility (hurting "only"
people with special needs).

And it seems that you just formulated your view in a wrong way - but your
view is still limited:

> You
> can also not use your headers well, specify small font sizes, over
> use layout tables and mislabel your alt tags (only humans can catch
> this error).

Surely. And you can write all texts in complicated language so that most
people have great difficulties with it and people with cognitive
disabilities don't understand it at all, or get it all wrong.

There are many ways to break accessibility, and no single tool can cover
all the aspects. Most tools check just a fairly limited number of aspects
in a limited manner. (For example, you can automatically check that
headings are used and that heading levels are not skipped, but that won't
catch many of the really common problems, like using headings with no
information content.)

(Layout tables do not, contrary to popular superstition among
accessibility advocates, create any substantial accessibility problems
when used adequately.)

--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/