Andy Budd wrote: > > Lee Roberts wrote: > > > Andy wanted to know what the WCAG working group members > > had to say about fixed and scalable width layouts. I am a > > member of the working group. > > > > Well, I gave an education and it seems the topic has grown > > to now include more about mobile devices. > > > > The purpose of variable width or elastic designs is to > > help people by allowing them to increase their font size > > without destroying the design. Yes, you will end up with > > right-scrolls. It doesn't matter what you do. > > Thanks for that Lee. So are you saying that the sole purpose of > checkpoint 3.7 is to accommodate the resizing of layouts along with > text? > > Does that mean in this case, pixels aren't being considered as relative > units, contrary to what the specs say? > > I have to admit that I have huge problems with the guidelines. Most > notably because they don't really tell you why each checkpoint is > necessary and how failure to comply can reduce accessibility. Some are > obvious, but many others aren't. > > > > Andy Budd >
If I can just add my 2 cents worth. 3.7 has to do with using markup in the correct semantic way. HTML is for marking up content. <q> and <blockquote> have meaning to user agents and parsers that are parsing documents for semantic value. If a designer was using this purely as a visual formatting technique, a blind person would have a different understanding of the way the information is communicated, because that information is being communicated via another device as a quoted block of text. If the designer wants to indent something in their design, which in itself could even be said to convey a visual semantic meaning, then they should do that with CSS. The problem is, that when TBL first adapted HTML from SGML, he only took 66% of the equation, he took from the SGML family HTML and DTD, but left out the DSSL component, and this oversight was latter addressed with CSS. Because there was no DSSL equivalent in the early drafts, default value for displaying the various elements are handled by the browsers... ie indent <blockquote>. pixels are relative units, but em is regarded as a far better representation of a relative unit from an accessibility point of view. The same principle is true in software development. But designers have to work with how well or how poorly user agents support the designs they want to implement. If you are having trouble understanding the guidelines I would suggest that you do go back and look at the history of human interface guidelines for digital devices and try to find the common thread. If you do this you will begin to see how WCAG evolved, and that the basic principles are consistent. You could also discuss specific checkpoints here, or on the W3C WAI Interest Group list, or the one at WebAIM. Regards Geoff ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help *****************************************************
