David Nicol wrote:
> I would be very grateful if someone could direct me to an existing > resource or article addressing the subject of how a validly-coded web > site can fail to be truly accessible. i.e. why valid code is not, in > itself, enough to guarantee accessibility.
No article, but here's the most basic example which makes the point fairly clear: on each image you use on the page, add an ALT attribute of "chicken". Now, all other things being equal, the page still validates (only requirement for validation here is that images DO have an ALT attribute), but to somebody who can't see the images and relies on ALT, it's absolute nonsense. Take it one step further: make the page contain one single, big image (rather than having actual text etc) and again some nonsensical ALT. Once again, the page validates, but is completely inaccessible to anybody who can't see the image.
There are thousands more examples, but the conclusion would be: HTML/XHTML validatity does not automatically take care of all other accessibility problems. In fact, apart from fulfilling checkpoint 3.2 of WCAG1.0, it does not automagically guarantee that any of the other checkpoints are appropriately met. http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/
Just read through the checkpoints, and ask yourself if valid markup automatically fulfills the criteria...
Hope this makes sense...
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