RT @johnfoliot: & If your (X)HTML is valid & your ARIA is valid, your document is valid, so don't worry about it. http://ow.ly/BdiE (@jared_w_smith) #a11yThis link is an interesting argument around ARIA and Standards an argument that I am not personally for or against. However, I am concerned with what will be the unintended consequences of institutional violation of long time standards. Let’s take the conversation a bit further. What I read the conversation to be saying is (and I may be wrong):
“If the page still renders and the same page provides valued information to some group and since there is no harm and there is value in the standard not being complied with then the standard, which is not valid, should not be marked invalid - so instead of failing the page let’s just give a warning.”To the readers of this blog post, I have to ask, have you ever cursed a software company for extending capabilities of their browser or web based software because it was outside of standards, do you have blogs that say right on top, best viewed with a standards compliant browser. Should the text on your blogs template read “best viewed with standards that I agree with and with exceptions that a respected group of people said are fine?” How do you suggest that I teach this deviation?
Let us look at this page: https://www.hisoftware.com/SP2010roundtable.htm .
- Let us ignore that it does not validate for a minute (because the importance of validation is in question, isn’t it)
- Let us also ignore that it has two HTML Tags (same pesky validation issue that does not impact rendering)
- Let us forget the 52 Errors (same pesky validation issue)
- Let us also forget that this page is a tribute to “Spacer.Gif”
Instead, let us forget these things because our argument is that there is no harm therefore no foul. To repeat the argument posed: if the page renders properly and meets the site or application developer technology baseline, sorry to drag that specter out, someone has to say it (I know I am taking it a step further and I will show you why in a moment, please be patient), then why not issue a warning and call this page valid! Let us look a little further: on this same page, put forward by the distinguished experts (in this case excuse the pun) we find an interesting error that would have been caught by AccVerify (IMHO – the gold standard). The error is with the ID’s on the form. IDs are case sensitive (same pesky validation issue); therefore, what do you think happens in the following case”
Now in IE 8 if you click on that label (Name) the input field is selected, now why not, the attribute requirement is silly, case sensitive? Why not change all validators to warn, most miss it anyway?//Please excuse the stripped HTML for blog purposes.
label for='name'
Name/label td width="50%" height="25" class="bodyText" align="left"
input id="Name
Now in the Latest; Firefox, Opera, and Safari (please forgive the lack of versions) nothing happens when tabbing or selecting. So why am I even looking at different browsers? I should not have to look at different browsers if this page was developed to standards. Is this not the purpose of the standards to begin with, standards are not for fun, are they?
Is there not some valid attribute that can be used on this static HTML page to let a user of “AT” know that this table is for layout only? Shouldn’t the people that cry out for the need of standards compliance be the ones that defend them versus making excuses as to why it is OK to break them?Look at this table:
table role="presentation" width="100%" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0
Why not just add stuff, separate from the standards and let AT Vendors take advantage of the new stuff! ON HTML5: why fight about accessibility attributes or features in the standard? Just put them in and User Agents and screen readers will take advantage of all the new stuff, even if they are not in the standard!
I know I take this a bit too far, but I have to remember my Dante; what was it Canto XXIII, Eighth Circle, Sixth Pit? OK I Digress, I have to ask my readers - when I go out and mentor young engineers, and they say “It works in IE, Firefox and Opera, which is all I code for” - what should I say to them? Should I tell them that the standards are arbitrary and that if it renders for their technology baseline, that they have selected for their project, then they are good? What do you think?
Download PDF of the Post: http://www.yonaitis.com/WhoneedsValid.pdf
Download PDF of the Post: http://www.yonaitis.com/WhoneedsValid.pdf



