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Re: Proper Markup on Web Pages

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From: Brooks Newton
Date: May 12, 2016 12:46PM

Hey Brandon,

I want to be clear in communicating my opinion that I do believe there is a tremendous amount of work that absolutely must be done by site and mobile app owners to support the accessibility of their content. No doubt about that, site / app owners, developers and other digital content production staff have their work cut out for them in the years ahead to uphold their ethical and legal obligations in making the Web and mobile app offerings more accessible. And in keeping with this opinion, my position is that content owners must also have a clear path to accessibility available to them, in terms of having a more complete list sufficient techniques at hand (for example, preapproved code snippets for implementing accessible Web page elements) related to making available advanced digital content for use by people with all abilities. We need to develop and publicize "approved" code constructs for design patterns we already see embedded in JavaScript libraries, development frameworks, Web site authoring tools, content management systems, etc. We should also be on a constant vigil, searching for new content constructs, page controls and information delivery systems that appear in the wild, which fall outside of the design patterns we already got in our vetted inventory of advance page components.

Oh yeah, and by the way, let's make the software manufacturers aware of and obligated to honor the vetted and approved content implementation techniques so that they can build their software, including operating systems, browsers / user agents, and assistive technology to support content owners who responsibly follow coding examples provided in the sufficient techniques. I know, I know - nobody wants to get bogged down in technology-centric standards. That's why, in my opinion, we need keep and cherish the generalized normative standards that work so well for WCAG 2.0, but also significantly expand upon the informative sufficient techniques with real world examples of how fancy Web page gizmos should be coded to spec. That way the software manufacturer programs can parse the site /app code properly, following their own regulated set of specifications, thus enabling access to end users with disabilities.

Anybody agree or disagree?

If there is anyone on this list that who is responsible in whole or in part for actively excluding software manufacturers from obligations under the proposed ADA update (recent ADA SANPRM), I would genuinely value an explanation for why you believe exclusion of these integral parties makes sense. If I don't hear back on this issue as a response on this thread, I'll ask the question again later in a separate post.

Thanks,

Brooks Newton