WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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RE: How pages are generated and Accessibility?

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From: Paul Bohman
Date: Sep 5, 2002 9:18AM

As far as accessibility is concerned, the process by which the content
is created is almost completely irrelevant, as long as the resulting
content is accessible. If you're creating HTML Web pages from XML source
documents via XSL conversion, the end result is still HTML. The truth is
that the end user never has to know that the conversion took place at
all. For all intents and purposes, the end user is viewing a static HTML
page.

The same is true of any server-side scripting system, such as JSP, PHP,
ASP, Perl, Python, Cold Fusion, or whatever else. If the processing
takes place on the server, the user receives only the end result, which
is usually in HTML or XHTML format.

The key, then, is to make sure that you code the XSL or scripting in
such a way that it creates accessible HTML output.

The only time where this can become a potential problem is if the
processing is done on the client's computer. For example, Internet
Explorer 6 and Netscape 6 and 7 can process XML documents with XSL
transformations. Most older versions of these browsers can't do this and
neither can most other browsers of other brands. This means that some
people will receive the correct document transformation, and others will
not, depending on their client setup.

To avoid this, you can use server-side XML/XSLT parsers, which are
available for most of the server-side scripting languages out there
(e.g. Java, PHP, etc.). If you do it this way, then the end user
receives only the end product in HTML format, and all is well.

Paul Bohman
Technology Coordinator
WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind)
www.webaim.org
Center for Persons with Disabilities
www.cpd.usu.edu
Utah State University
www.usu.edu