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Re: Wired News Redesigned for Accessibility

for

From: Joe Clark
Date: Oct 11, 2002 4:03PM


>It's great to see so many sites taking steps toward accessibility -
>especially informative, useful, and educational sites such as
>wired.com. I couldn't resist running some reports on the new site
>and though they have definitely made progress, their claims fall
>short. They don't yet meet WCAG priority 1
><http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/bobbyServlet?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com>;

But they didn't *claim* Priority 1, and compliance with that priority
level can be demonstrated only by human interpretation.

>nor are they using valid XHTML.
><http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com>;

Sigh.

Zeldman and I wrote separate discussions about absolute purity of
validation within a day of each other.

<http://www.zeldman.com/daily/1002a.html#wired>;
<http://www.contenu.nu/article.htm?id=1229>;

There are sometimes quite intractable reasons why absolutely-perfect
HTML validity cannot be reached. Missing *just one or two things*
generally has no bearing on anything at all, unless those things are,
say, alt texts. Really, <hr> *is* the same as <hr />, to use an
hypothetical example.

>It becomes quite clear that with a little education, such sites
>could be made accessible AND standards based.

If you're still talking about Wired, do some more research before
saying, in effect, that the developers don't know enough. There's
loads of evidence that they *do* know enough but have outside
constraints.

>Yet on the other hand, I have to applaud them for making an effort
>when so many others cower and hide at the very mention of standards
>and access.

Indeed.
--

Joe Clark | <EMAIL REMOVED>
Accessibility <http://joeclark.org/access/>;
Author, _Building Accessible Websites_
<http://joeclark.org/book/>;


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