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Re: Link format: to underline or not

for

From: steven
Date: Oct 6, 2010 10:24AM

" If these things don't happen (and I suspect they won't) what else can we
do other than build these features into our websites?"

This is going to sound controversial, but I'm just voicing out an extremist
thought here ...

Taking currently inaccessible websites as a point of reference (basic
examples of what these typically are follow further on), because they are
already inaccessible (hence it wouldn't be an issue to have to consider
making them accessible, or more accessible), could we not start making them
more accessible with better browsers in mind (think beyond HTML5 article,
section and menu tags) and ignore things like adding skip links at the start
of pages in anticipation that this will be fixed at some point in the future
by the browsers/os developers. I know, thus far, this is like choosing to
ignore fixing the problem, but ...

... by taking excessive and inaccessible content like JavaScript menus and
nasty image menus out of current pages, and restraining ourselves from just
replacing them with additional excessive controls such as font sizing and
skip links, the pages can be made better (although in need of future
browser/os support to introduce better user controls) than the current pages
if not perfect (which is ultimately fixing the problem, albeit to a smaller
degree). Obviously, adding font sizing and skips links has an immediate
advantage on a website by website basis (no having to wait for browsers to
change - if we think they will at all), but ultimately I see all such
features (like font sizing and skip links) needing to be taking out again in
the future in the same way we've done by replacing tabled websites with
divs.

I think one step forward in accessibility by 100,000 website developers,
instead of 2 steps forward, is still stepping forward with accessibility.
When browsers catch up, they could instantaneously provide better
accessibility to those 100,000 websites and another 10,000,000 (which
needn't have had much extra accessibility work done, if at all)
instantaneously ... whereas stepping 2 steps forward, could likely mean
10,000,000 websites instantaneously updated by a few browser updates, where
as the other 100,000 websites need to undo there intermediary changes
(despite the best intentions of doing so).

Basically, I think our hard work would affect a minority of websites on the
internet, where as a quick browser updated could dwarf our efforts by the
sheer number of websites they could effect in an instance and without a real
cost to the owners of websites, and possibly require our websites to be
changed again because we over-compensated.

Maybe I am worrying too much?

Steven