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RE: WAI needs to rethink and revisit (was Printable character between adjacent links)

for

From: Kevin Spruill
Date: May 20, 2002 7:32AM

I'm confused - the WAI recommendation is to use relative font sizes, but
your colleague cites that recommendation as a reason to use fixed fonts?
This recommendation reads to me as saying:

1. Use relative fonts
2. If you choose to use fixed fonts instead, validate to assure that
the content is accessible

Seems to me the first part trumps the second... hence my confusion over
the the justification in using fixed font size. (Will we ever be done
with this "argument") :)

The WAI is in fact reviewing all of the WCAG 1.0 guidelines - you can
review the WCAG 2.0 draft at the site, wherein a lot of the things that
have been discussed on the list, have been revised.

HK

Kevin Spruill
National Library of Medicine
OCCS
<EMAIL REMOVED>
(301) 402-9708
(301) 402-0367 (fax)
www.nlm.nih.gov

>>> <EMAIL REMOVED> 05/17/02 09:02AM >>>
Hear, hear!!

I am currently embroiled in a debate with an associate over the use (or

non-use) of fixed font sizes. His argument is that if he does not use
fixed
font sizes in his stlyesheets that the "display" becomes unpredictable
in
different browers/OS implementations. He points to the WAI Guidelines
wording as justification: (This statement is found in the Guidelines
( http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/ )) "3.4 Use relative rather than
absolute
units in mark-up language attribute values and style sheet property
values.
[Priority 2] For example, in CSS, use 'em' or percentage lengths rather

than 'pt' or 'cm', which are absolute units. If absolute units are
used,
validate that the rendered content is usable"

While I feel comfortable in debating the folly of this mind set it does
open
the debate up, as the WAI wording is counterproductive and, IMHO
against the
spirit of Universal Accessibility.

How can we, as committed developers and advocates, influence the W3C to

revisit their wording? Thoughts?

JF




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael R. Burks [ mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
> Sent: May 16, 2002 9:35 AM
> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Subject: RE: Printable character between adjacent links
>
>
> Just one more reason that the WAI needs to rethink and revisit
> much of what
> they recommend.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Mike Burks
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Prof Norm Coombs [ mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
> Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2002 8:57 AM
> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Subject: RE: Printable character between adjacent links
>
>
> As a blind user of the Internet,
> I hate hate hate those characters between links that WAI thinks
> is so nice.
>
> At 11:31 AM 5/15/02 +0300, you wrote:
> >philip steven lanier wrote:
> >
> > > Adjacent image-based links can unambiguously be made visually
distinct
> > > from each other. Consider a row of circular "button"
> > > graphics with text or icons in them.
> >
> >Yes, that's one possibility I had in my mind. Sorry for not
> making it clear
> >that borders and margins were just _examples_ of the visual
presentation
> >features that could be used. Yet another possibility - for images
that
> >essentially contain text - would be to use alternating background
colors
> >that are sufficiently different.
> >
> >The basic problem to avoid is having a row of links like
> > foo bar zap blurp more foo more bar and so on
> >in image format, with no obvious (and I mean _obvious_ to
> virtually anyone
> >who sees it) indication of where each link ends or even how many
links
> there
> >are. A useful rule of thumb: the user should be able to recognize
them as
> >separate links without knowing the topic or even the language used.
It
> >happens too often that people rely on orthography like capital
letters or
> >even recognizing _phrases_, or other "higher level protocol" issues.

> >
> >--
> >Jukka Korpela
> >TIEKE Tietoyhteiskunnan kehitt