WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: breadcrumb navigation

for

From: Patrick Lauke
Date: Nov 29, 2004 8:21AM

> From: michael.brockington

> In the context of this discussion HTML is a purley visual medium.
> Electronic text markup (for print-processing) I believe to be
> much older than
> HTML, and it in turn evolved from freehand anotations, so
> even if I only
> minimal intelligence I have to assume that you are being
> deliberatly evasive
> here.

Aeh...please point out where exactly I'm being evasive.

> No, you've got that the wrong way around: the code is merely
> a standardised
> representation of the visual xxx (pick your own word if you must.

Actually, I beg to differ. The code defines the logical relationship
and hierarchies of the content. It does not necessarily have anything
to do with the visual. Sure, the W3C wrongly appropriated terminology
that was deeply rooted in print design (heading, paragraph, etc), when
what they probably should have done is to come up with medium-neutral
element names (title, section, etc), because that's how they're intended.

> I think
> we are all agreed that the physical divisions of HTML code
> should match the
> logical divisions?

Yes.

> That being so, the structure of the HTML should match the
> structure of the
> page, regardless of CSS etc.

And yes again.

Heck, I had to go back to re-read the thread to actually
work out where this whole discussion of principles started, and to summarise:

- Tim suggests using a faux-column background image to achieve the
desired visual styling and appearance.
- Michael suggests that said technique replaces natural element borders,
"structural elements", with images and should not be used, as it does not
scale well on small screen devices (since it uses fixed width background)
- I jump in to point out that borders are not structural elements per se, but
visual manifestations, if you will, of structural elements
- a whole metaphysical discussion about what is structure, content, visual
presentation etc ensues.

To be honest, I agree with the sentiment behind the original suggestion not
to use visual tricks such as faux columns in most cases. As we seem to be
looking at content from a fundamentally different angle, we could probably
carry on with this discussion of semantics. I'm quite happy to agree to disagree
on this though.

Patrick
________________________________
Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk