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RE: Is doctype really important

for

From: Larry G. Hull
Date: Mar 15, 2004 8:28AM

As far as I'm aware, doctype isn't specifically part of Section 508
but the absence of doctype certainly can be an accessibility issue
inasmuch as (1) you can't use a tool to validate your code without a
specification (DTD) against which to validate and (2) poor and/or
browser specific (acceptable) code can give assistive technology
problems.

From the W3C HTML 4.01 Specification at
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html#version-info

"A valid HTML document declares what version of HTML is used in the
document. The document type declaration names the document type
definition (DTD) in use for the document (see [ISO8879])."

In my opinion, browsers are sometimes a little too forgiving when
they accept (or ignore) bad or absent coding.

Larry

At 9:25 AM -0500 3/15/04, <EMAIL REMOVED> wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
>> From: Chris Price [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
>
>> In the WAG guidelines we are told that a page should
>> "validate to published
>> formal grammars" and recommends including a doctype.
>>
>> I have found that a doctype definitely makes a difference
>> when relying on
>> style sheets for layout but many commercial sites don't
>> include a doctype
>> and I can only presume they don't see the need for one.
>>
>> How important is a doctype in terms of accessibility and can
>> the lack of one
>> make any real difference when it comes to a table based layout.
>
>
>Doctype does not affect accessibility per se but it is part of the WAI (I
>don't know if it is part of Section 508). However, checkpoing 3.2 states
>"3.2 Create documents that validate to published formal grammars." which
>means that to validate, you must have a doctype.
>
>Many commercial sites probably use a CMS that does not insert a Doctype -
>this is bad form but in the past, many errors were made in HTML and allowed
>through the cracks.
>
>Does doctype affect tables for layout? No but the general recommendation is
>that if you can do without them, do so: if you can reduce their use for
>layout but cannot eliminate them altogether, that too is good but neither
>have anything to do with the doctype.


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