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WCAG 2.0 'accessibility supported'

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From: Mark Magennis
Date: Feb 6, 2009 3:45AM


Dear all,

I'm trying to get to grips with the concept of 'accessibility
supported' introduced in WCAG 2.0. Specifically, in relation to the
issue of ensuring that text can be resized by user agents.

Here's a hypothetical example. Suppose you have an HTML page
containing a single sentence of plain text: "The quick brown fox jumps
over the lazy dog". Suppose the size of the text is specified in
pixels, so the text cannot be resized in IE6 (with its default
settings).

1. Does the fact that many users use IE6 (with its default settings)
mean that the use of pixel values in HTML is not accessibility
supported? And if all users switch to using a browser that can resize
text specified in pixels, would that mean the use of pixel values is
now accessibility supported?

2. If the HTML page was removed and the same plain text sentence was
presented in a PDF file such that it could be resized by all user
agents that display PDFs, would that use of PDF be accessibility
supported?

3. Does this mean that whatever technology is used (HTML, PDF or
whatever), it is not the technology itself that is either
accessibility supported or not, but the way that technology is used or
the specific functionalities of the technology that are used?

Mark





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