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Re: Accessibility Forum

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From: Holly Marie
Date: Feb 24, 2002 10:33PM


----- Original Message -----
From: "John Foliot - bytown internet"
>
> This is not meant to be a flame, so I will stop. I will presume that
all of
> the participants are well meaning and they even have some big names
there,
> including Trace, the US Department of Education and the GSA. So why
is it
> so hard to get even the basics covered off?


> Do I sound like a snob? To some, probably. But learning basic HTML
can be
> done in 3 or 4 days, maybe a week to really get the hang of it. It's
about
> structure, not "looks", and when industry and government wake up to
that
> simple fact, a major hurdle will be crossed. Craft and talent is to
take
> those basics and still create something with visual appeal. It angers
me to
> no end to see sloppy output like this, doubly so because this group's
> apparent mission is supposed to be about overcoming these obstacles,
not
> creating more of the same. I'm not some "text only" ludite here, I
like and
> appreciate good looking web sites as much as the next, but let's not
forget
> the basics in all our enthusiasm. Test your pages, validate your
code,
> think about what *might* happen under different situations. I found
all of
> the above problems in under 3 minutes... it would take about an hour
to fix
> the majority of them.


Before you get too crazy about Validity of HTML or now I should really
be saying XHTML... also note that the W3C and its members hardly
validate for HTML...and they were the ones that put these regulations
into force...

see this piece regarding this topic....quite an interesting discovery.
but not a total surprise.
State of the Validation 2002 { posted on Friday, 22nd of February }
http://homepage.mac.com/marko/20020222.html
"... out of the 506 w3c members, only eighteen have web sites that
validate with the w3c validator as either html or xhtml. 141 members
proudly display sites with definite markup errors; a whopping 342 sites
couldn't be tested at all because of lacking dtd definitions. Sad."

and another here:
On valid HTML { posted on Sunday, 24th of February }
http://homepage.mac.com/marko/

and a good discussion on this Validation topic over at MetaFilter
http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/15007

holly

I like to write XHTML Strict and use only CSS, myself. And I validate my
work and check it for backwards compatibility. So it feels good to be in
a minority, but do it well.




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