WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

HTML 5 (sic) and A11y

for

From: Joshue O Connor
Date: Jan 24, 2011 10:06AM

Hi y'all,

I just saw Ian Hicksons post on the WHATWG Blog where the HTML 5
"technology is not versioned and instead we just have a living document
that defines the technology as it evolves".

What this move effectively means is that HTML (5) will be implemented in
a piecemeal manner, with vendors (browser manufacturers/AT makers etc)
cherry picking the parts that they want. It could be argued that this is
the way it _already_ is however as a specification isn't a movable feast
there is more chance for consistency and stability. This current move by
the WHATWG, will mean that discussions that have been going on about how
best to implement accessibility features in HTML 5 could well become
redundant, or unfinished or maybe never even implemented at all.

What is implemented will be dependent on where the "living
specification" is at any point in time. If I am flying in a plane, I
don't want to know the engineers were still not in agreement about how
to design the engines after the plane has taken off.

I think this will mean piecemeal implementation by vendors, with the
caveat that "the spec is in flux so we can only implement the most
stable parts of it" which is a perfect get out clause for a poor user
experience.

This is a disappointing move, and a retrograde step that could well make
the fine tuning of important accessibility aspects of HTML (5) even harder.

My 2 cents*

Josh

[1] http://blog.whatwg.org/html-is-the-new-html5
* Apologies for cross posting

NCBI: Celebrating 80 Years

********************************************************************
National Council for the Blind of Ireland (NCBI) is a company
limited by guarantee (registered in Ireland No. 26293) .
Our registered office is at Whitworth Road, Drumcondra, Dublin 9.
NCBI is also a registered Charity (chy4626).

NOTICE: The information contained in this email and any attachments
is confidential and may be privileged. If you are not the intended
recipient you should not use, disclose, distribute or copy any of
the content of it or of any attachment; you are requested to notify
the sender immediately of your receipt of the email and then to
delete it and any attachments from your system.

NCBI endeavours to ensure that emails and any attachments generated
by its staff are free from viruses or other contaminants. However,
it cannot accept any responsibility for any such which are
transmitted. We therefore recommend you scan all attachments.

Please note that the statements and views expressed in this email
and any attachments are those of the author and do not necessarily
represent the views of NCBI


********************************************************************