Category: WebStandards

WCAG Samurai Errata now finalized

The WCAG Samurai Errata published a final version of their suggested improvements. This is the work of a group of independent accessibility experts formed by Joe Clark to attempt to address shortcomings in the WCAG, a W3C recommendation from 1999. From the Introduction:

The first thing to understand is that you do not have to comply with these errata. The WCAG Samurai errata are an optional addition to WCAG 1, which we use as a base. You start by reading and understanding WCAG 1, then you read these errata as a correction to WCAG 1.

Read the Introduction for an overview and summary of the main points. Then you can get into the details. A few highlights of the recommendations by the Samurai are that you must comply with all Priority 1 and 2 guidelines, but you must not attempt to comply with Priority 3 guidelines. Layout tables, frames, and untagged PDF documents are banned. Video soundtracks must be captioned. Sites must use valid code and correct semantics for content.

There are separate documents for color and PDF.

If you do choose to comply with these guidelines, there is suggested phrasing for inclusion on your website. An example: “Our site is built to comply with WCAG+Samurai.” There is no mention of which tools are capable of making an evaluation such as this.

I’d like to see a standards advocacy group like the Web Standards Project or a Samurai-like group take on one more thing that is a constant concern to me. I use ads and other third party content on my site from sites like Amazon, Google, Flickr, and Yahoo. These third party sources do not provide valid HTML. Pressure on vendors to provide valid HTML would be an important project to improve the web. I know this wasn’t the aim of the WCAG Samurai, I’m just saying . . .

Related Posts: Tagging a PDF

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HTML5 First Working Draft

The W3C released the first working draft of HTML5. They really, really, really want your help and input. Here are a few of the phrases from the spec that prove how in need they are of careful critical appraisal for this spec.

This specification should be read like all other specifications. First, it should be read cover-to-cover, multiple times. Then, it should be read backwards at least once. Then it should be read by picking random sections from the contents list and following all the cross-references.

Almost everything is marked “non-normative” but just in case you don’t get the point, they say,

All diagrams, examples, and notes in this specification are non-normative, as are all sections explicitly marked non-normative. Everything else in this specification is normative.

The working draft is sprinkled with sentences similar to this one:

The current situation with IDL blocks is pitiful.

There is a section on the DOM, the semantics, browsing contexts, APIs and the language context. In the HTML section, they explain new HTML elements which are under consideration, such as the section element.

The section element represents a generic document or application section. A section, in this context, is a thematic grouping of content, typically with a header, possibly with a footer.

Examples of sections would be chapters, the various tabbed pages in a tabbed dialog box, or the numbered sections of a thesis. A Web site’s home page could be split into sections for an introduction, news items, contact information.

The document is huge. To comment helpfully, you’ll need to devote several hours to studying it prior to having your say. The more people to apply some sharp intelligence to this effort, the better off we’ll all be in the end.

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Useful links roundup

Web Worker Daily has a great set of links to online browser testing services. They list seven, some of them free, such as IE NetRenderer, which will show your page in IE 5.5, 6, or 7.

Flocking to the pictures, in TiKouka, gives an excellent overview of what the social media browser Flock is all about. If you are a big user of social media, Flock sounds like a good app to investigate and perhaps use.

Online Survival Guide: 9 Tips for Dealing with Idiots on the Internet provides some good advice from Internet Duct Tape. Don’t let yourself get disemvoweled.

The Kimberly Blessing Interview by Christopher Schmitt is worth a read. Blessing started as an Interactive Developer for AOL. She currently works for PayPal as the manager of their Web Development Platform Team. Kimberly authored the “The Circle of Standards” chapter for the book, Adapting to Web Standards. She’s also a co-leader of the Web Standards Project. The conversation ranges from web standards, to coping with SXSWi when you’re an introvert, to fan sites. (This last was of interest to me, since I’ve been running a fan site for years, but mine is a definite Web 1.0 site.)

HTML WG links

Lots of disagreement, dissatisfaction, and conflicting opinions about what needs to be done with HTML. Here’s the latest round of discussion:

Today’s useful links

An educational technology dead end? examines content management systems and related issues.

HTML Design Principles is a draft from the W3C of HTML5. This is not a recommendation and will change. They want comments by email at public-html-comments@w3.org. Keep in mind that WHATWG has an opinion on this issue, too.

The Email Standards Projects is a subgroup within the Web Standards Project, working to get standard applications of HTML in email applications. They are looking for help.

Zooming Backgrounds in IE 7 discusses a problem and solution for those using faux columns as a design technique. Seems in IE 7, a background image doesn’t zoom along with the rest of the page, causing a problem with faux columns.

Five ways to shape the soul of the Internet by Alexandra Samuel contains thought provoking gems such as, “Give your attention to sites, people and organizations that reflect your true values. . . . every page you load is a vote to have more of that kind of content, or more of that kind of interaction.”

An explanation of the abbreviations in a DTD

If you’ve never looked at a Document Type Definition (DTD), you’ve missed one a web designer’s most interesting experiences. I’m only kidding a little bit. You can download several flavors of DTD from the W3C and read them for your edification.

You see a lot of abbreviations and not much explanation of what it all means. I’ll explain a few of the abbreviations for you. Take a look at the information in the XHTML1-transitional.dtd for the HTML element body:

<!ELEMENT html (head, body)>
<!ATTLIST html
%i18n;
id ID #IMPLIED
xmlns %URI; #FIXED 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'
>

The two items in parentheses are elements that must be included. If you see a question mark after an element listed in parentheses, it means it may be included. If you see a plus sign, it means at least one of that element must be included.

ATTLIST is attribute list. What follows is a list of attributes that this particular element can have. %i18n; is an attribute related to internationalization and means that the element can be adapted to multiple locales. The first attribute is id which is defined as ID and #IMPLIED. #IMPLIED means the attribute is legal to include but not required. If it were required, it would say #REQUIRED.

An example of a #REQUIRED attribute would be the src attribute for the element img.

The next attribute you see is xmlns (xml namespace) which is defined as %URI;. Since this is preceded by a percent sign and followed by a semi-colon, the URI will be replaced by a declared value. In this particular case, the value is #FIXED 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'. In most other situations, a URI would not be fixed.

Two other abbreviations you may see are CDATA and PCDATA. The first, CDATA, means character data. In English, that means what ever string of letters you put there. For example, class CDATA #IMPLIED, tells you that the class can have character data as a value. On the other hand, PCDATA stands for parsed character data. This means not merely a string of characters, but some entities that may have to be escaped or interpreted by the parser (browser) to have special meaning. So you see things in a DTD like this: !ELEMENT script (#PCDATA).

Finally, you may see hyphens and zeros. For example, !ELEMENT UL - - (LI)+ . The hyphens (and/or zeros) travel in pairs and represent the requirements for a starting and ending tag. So - - means both a starting and ending tag are required, while - 0 means a starting tag is required, but an ending tag is optional. So in the example, !ELEMENT UL - - (LI)+ , a ul requires a starting and ending tag. But the br element, !ELEMENT BR - O EMPTY requires no ending tag.