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Re: use of <pre> tag

for

From: Julie Dodd
Date: Nov 5, 2010 8:36AM

Hello Andrew,

Thank you for your reply and welcome.

In my haste, I might not have been exactly clear in my original email.

We have legal data that is currently being generated in an HTML file,
but is displayed entirely with the <pre> tag. The headings are
rendered in caps with double spacing between paragraphs. There are
multi-level outlines that are of course, not rendered with list tags.

I have been advocating for proper markup of this content in order for
it to be navigable for assistive technologies (as well as improved
legibility for sighted users). As you pointed out, it will be a
significant undertaking. I want to be sure I am accurate in my
position before advocating for this effort.

Regards,
Julie


On Nov 4, 2010, at 3:28 PM, Simius Puer wrote:

> Hi Julie
>
> Welcome to the list.
>
> The short answer is: yes, it is required.
>
> If I am correct in interpreting what you are saying, you essentially
> have no
> mark-up other than <pre> in the entire document - in that case,
> whilst the
> document is not "inaccessible" as such, it contains absolutely no
> semantic
> mark-up and can not be considered accessible.
>
> I would go beyond that to say that the presentation of the document
> might
> also prove problematic for those with no disabilities as there is
> little to
> guide the user as to the hierarchy of the document - so this becomes a
> matter of usability rather than just accessibility.
>
> Whilst you could argue that all the content is 'technically'
> accessible (in
> a very tick-box approach) that doesn't make it genuinely so...and I
> know a
> great many people on this list would even disagree with the first
> part of
> what I've said there ;]
>
> If you think you have great many lengthy legal documents to deal
> with all I
> can say is that I worked as part of a team on http://
> www.opsi.gov.uk/ who a
> few years back added a great many back-years catalogue of UK
> legislation to
> their on-line catalogue. Not only did much of the data have to be
> imported
> from scratch, but the work on the XML schema and HTML/CSS mark-up to
> be used
> was very extensive....legal documents rarely have less than the 6
> levels of
> heading provided in HTML for a start ;]
>
> Best regards
>
> ___