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Re: evaluating accessibility with WCAG 2.0 (Angela French)

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From: Jason Kiss
Date: Apr 11, 2011 4:15AM


Thanks for rekindling the discussion, John. Agreed: it is an interesting
topic.

Success Criterion 1.3.1 does not seem to offer an absolute conclusion
either way with regard to a group of links displayed horizontally and
separated by the pipe character, even if we all seem to be in agreement
that best practice would have it marked up as an unordered list. I meant
to suggest in my earlier comments that, should one want to take a strict
approach in terms of enforcing best practice and semantic HTML, that it
could be considered a WCAG violation. In the end, however, the
application of the Success Criterion, at least in this scenario, is
certainly open to interpretation.

This is what I find most interesting about the discussion. While WCAG
2.0 has done much to provide more strongly testable guidelines, thereby
resulting in more decisive declarations of what does or does not comply,
there still remains room for argument and interpretation, particularly
with certain Success Criteria like 1.3.1. I'm not suggesting this is
necessarily a bad thing.

For argument's sake, let's assume that the main navigation is a group of
links visually presented in typical fashion as a distinct and
horizontally arranged grouping, with each link separated by a pipe. Is
it reasonable to suggest that this arrangement visually *implies* that
the structure of the overall grouping and the relationships among the
links are those of a list? Certainly, such a visual arrangement is not
the traditional presentation of a vertical list of bulleted list items,
but does a sighted user conceptually understand this arrangement as a
set or list of individual but related links? What are the reasons for
displaying them as a distinct group and of separating each link with a
pipe?

John correctly notes that a list of links so presented and marked up is
hardly an egregious accessibility barrier. Still, declaring such less
than ideal markup as a violation of WCAG, especially when more usable
and semantically correct markup exists, can be a nice bit of leverage in
certain contexts, at least in terms of requiring best practices and
accessible, semantic HTML.

Is such an interpretation even reasonable, or am I just muddying the
waters around the intent of Success Criterion 1.3.1 or of the
application of WCAG Success Criteria in general?

Jason

On 11/04/11 20:26, John Hicks wrote:
> Hello
> I see from this exchange that my previous remark was perhaps too severe
> and I buy the arguments given since.
> Of course many screen readers do link listings also so the fact that
> these links are not in an html list is not the end of the story
>
> Nevertheless, using an ascii character (the pipe symbol) for formatting
> still irks me.
>
> If this "non-list" of links were vertical with a lower case "o" making a
> bullet for each item .... which is basically the same thing, I bet the
> reactions would be different.
>
> In any event it would read like a romantic poem (O! site map, O!
> Contact, O! Terms of Use...)
>
> Interesting topic
>
> best wishes,
> John
>
>
> e 09/04/2011 01:29, Angela French a écrit :
>> Agreed.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Keith (mteye)
>> Sent: Friday, April 08, 2011 4:27 PM
>> To: WebAIM Discussion List
>> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] evaluating accessibility with WCAG 2.0 (Angela French)
>>
>> It may be that a self trained html coder isn't aware of the method to create horizontal lists, rather than a vertical list (default behavior for browsers.) There's no excuse for someone claiming to be a professional web designer.
>>
>> Just a personal observation, and opinion.
>>
>> from
>> Keith H
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Karen Sorensen
>> Sent: Friday, April 08, 2011 1:29 PM
>> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] evaluating accessibility with WCAG 2.0 (Angela French)
>>
>> Good reminder John Hicks. The separation of content from design/layout/format with CSS is critical. If the pipes are used to separate a list, but the list isn't HTML coded as a list, that would be interpreted incorrectly by a screen reader.
>>
>> Karen Sorensen
>> PCC Instructional Technology Specialist
>> Coordinating ADA Compliance of Instructional Media
>> 971-722-4720
>>