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Re: SPAM?:Re: evaluating accessibility with WCAG 2.0

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From: Michael.Moore@dars.state.tx.us
Date: Apr 7, 2011 8:09AM

I respectfully disagree with Jason and John and agree with Andrew. The standard is open to interpretation in this case. I reread understanding 1.3.1 http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/content-structure-separation-programmatic.html and noted that the idea is to preserve semantic meaning that is presented through visual or auditory formatting. In this case we have a row of links separated by pipe characters. Is that really a visual presentation of a list? If you were to show the page to several people who are not web developers or accessibility folks and asked them to point out lists on the page, how many of them would point to that group of links?

If I were conducting the evaluation, I would make a note in the report that best practice would be to place the links in a list and include the benefits of placing them in the list. The recipients of the report should be made aware that this item falls into a gray area within the guidelines and that it is their call as to whether or not to make the change.

Mike Moore
(512) 424-4159

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of John Hicks
Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2011 5:17 AM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: SPAM?:Re: [WebAIM] evaluating accessibility with WCAG 2.0

I agree with Jason; this clearly this is a violation.

Remember that one of the principles behind all "rules" for accessibility
is the separation of content and form.
Although seemingly innocent... the use of the pipe to separate the
elements points directly to a hard-coding of layout.

Using a correctly styled list would avoid this.

good day to all,

John

Le 07/04/2011 09:19, Jason Kiss a écrit :
> Whether or not it's a full-on violation is, like many things to do with
> semantic markup, open to interpretation. But should one want to take a
> strict approach, I could see calling it a failure of WCAG 2.0 SC 1.3.1
> since the content is fairly clearly, I would argue, a list of links, and
> so should be marked up as a list, as you describe.
>
> Making it a list would also provide assistive technology users with
> information about the number of links in the list. Such an approach is
> supported by Sufficient Technique H48: Using ol, ul and dl for lists or
> groups of links (http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20101014/H48).
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jason