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Re: use of <pre> tag

for

From: Julie Dodd
Date: Nov 5, 2010 9:00AM

Hello Mike,

I am also in the US and Section 508 is our primary concern, too. You
make an excellent point regarding "equivalent facilitation." I found
this in the buildings and facilities checklists, does this also apply
to the internet?

Thank you,
Julie


On Nov 5, 2010, at 7:44 AM, Langum, Michael J wrote:

> I am mostly concerned with Section 508. I don't believe there is
> any explicit requirement for semantic markup (aside from tables).
> But section 508 DOES require "equivalent facilitation." I think you
> could (and should) make the argument that not explicitly marking up
> headers and lists means that there is not "equivalent facilitation."
>
> -- Mike
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> ] On Behalf Of Julie Dodd
> Sent: Friday, November 05, 2010 10:36 AM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] use of <pre> tag
>
> 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
>>
>> ___
>