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Re: How pages are generated and Accessibility?

for

From: Kynn Bartlett
Date: Sep 5, 2002 12:20PM

At 2:36 PM +0100 9/5/02, Frank Gaine wrote:
>Does the manner in which a web page is generated affect its accessibility?

Indirectly.

>For example, how about pages that are generated using XML by being run
>through an XSL stylesheet(s) which then renders the data as HTML?
>Confusing? Don't wory, join the club.

There's no direct effect on the accessibility of the page -- because
you are using the XSLT to generate an HTML page (or XHTML page), and that
gets sent from the server to the browser, the end result is what
matters. This is also the case for HTML generated by Perl, by PHP,
by ASP, etc. However, READ ON.

>Any technicaly minded takers on this on? Kynn, I'm looking in your direction
>(simley icon).

The _indirect_ effect of a generated page, whether from a database or
from an XML data store, is that you're already forced to separate
content (the data) from the presentation and navigation (the templates).

This makes it incredibly easy to repurpose that content, including
creating alternative versions of the site such as a "printable" version
or one optimized for screenreaders. This is the kind of thing we were
doing at (snif) Edapta [RIP 2000] on a more advanced scale, but it's
easily doable by anyone with a generated page. It's just a different
template, for the most part.

My own Web site (kynn.com) consists of PHP pages which are simply a
large content section as a variable, and a call to a site-wide
subroutine to generate the navigation bars and appearance. This made
it trivial to add a "print this page" function which formats the
page appropriately for printed output.

--Kynn

--
Kynn Bartlett < <EMAIL REMOVED> > http://kynn.com
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain http://idyllmtn.com
Next Book: Teach Yourself CSS in 24 http://cssin24hours.com
Kynn on Web Accessibility ->> http://kynn.com/+sitepoint


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