E-mail List Archives
Thread: Issue related to WCAG checkpoint 6.1
Number of posts in this thread: 2 (In chronological order)
From: Dey Alexander
Date: Wed, Feb 26 2003 3:50PM
Subject: Issue related to WCAG checkpoint 6.1
No previous message | Next message →
I have a question about an issue related to WCAG 1.0 checkpoint 6.1
"Organize documents so that they may be read without stylesheets...",
and seek your collective wisdom.
From my reading of the CSS techniques docco (at
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-CSS-TECHS/#Generated) and the WAI curriculum
(at http://www.w3.org/WAI/wcag-curric/sam52-0.htm), I have been of the
impression that this checkpoint was intended to cover two main types of
situation:
1. Where CSS-generated content might be lost, and
2. Where read order might be skewed
I'm currently doing some research on the accessibility of university web
sites (in Australia) and have found a different type of issue that is
related to readability without stylesheets, but for which I doubt 6.1
was written to cover. I'd be interested in hearing your views.
Here's an example: a page has a dark blue background, hardcoded into a
table cell element, e.g. <td bgcolor="...">. It uses white text for
links and content, but these are handled by CSS. Remove the CSS and you
get black text and dark blue links on a blue background - clearly
unreadable. While this would certainly cause a problem for users with
version 3.x browsers (Netscape/IE), I'm not at all sure that this is the
situation that 6.1 was trying to capture.
So, what's your view?
Cheers,
Dey
----
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
From: Paul Bohman
Date: Wed, Feb 26 2003 4:19PM
Subject: RE: Issue related to WCAG checkpoint 6.1
← Previous message | No next message
I don't think that the scenario you described was the primary concern of
checkpoint 6.1, but it may have been one of their concerns. It certainly is
a circumstance in which the content becomes difficult to read.
Internet Explorer 6 turns off both html and css backgound colors when you
set it to ignore background colors. It doesn't give you a choice to turn off
just one or the other. Netscape 4.8 and 7.1 appear to work the same way.
It's a little bit unusual to turn of just the css colors without also
turning off html colors, but this might occur on a page in an older browser
that supports html colors but not css colors. In this case it would be of
primary concern for users of that browser.
If only css is used, or only html colors, this conflict does not come up.
The conflict also would not come up if the html colors and css colors were
performing the same function and mimicked each other. It would come up,
though, where css and html are combined and both are required for the
document to be legible.
Paul Bohman
Technology Coordinator
WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind)
www.webaim.org
Center for Persons with Disabilities
www.cpd.usu.edu
Utah State University
www.usu.edu
---
*Register now*
WebAIM's Online Web Accessibility Training Event 2003
at www.webaim.org/training2003/
Dates: March 31-April 18
This event offers invaluable instruction and resources for developers,
managers/administrators, and accessibility trainers. Be a part of it!
---