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-- Accessibility and Usability
---- Who is responsible for web accessibility?

DrDoc - 4:11 am on Jul 13, 2007 (gmt 0)


Very good point.

I, too, disagree with shuffling of the "should handle" responsibility to the tools. Tools are, after all, just machines. They are not organic. They are not intelligent. By all means, many should be (and will become) much stricter in the future than they are today.

So, yes, the issue of tables nested several levels deep (as a means of controlling layout) ... The publisher of such poor markup cannot push the blame over on the tools. How is a tool supposed to know at what point to treat the various table cells as simply anonymous containers and when to treat them as true tables?

In my opinion, here's the responsibility which falls on the developer:

  • clean and semantically logic markup (no ifs or buts or excuses here)
  • intuitive layout and design
  • use of well written content which is grammatically correct and culturally appropriate
  • usable and accessible without bells and whistles (i.e. absence of Flash, JavaScript disabled, text-only browser, keyboard-only navigation, etc.)
  • intuitive and creative without general boundaries (don't invent a menu system which your users do not immediately understand how to use ... don't get overly creative with site search features [a site search is a site search and should be treated as such] or similar features ... links should be distinguishable ... users should always know [or easily be able to find out] where they are at with regards to site structure)

    Leaves little room for accidental misinterpretation by the tools and the user, doesn't it? Well, that's how it should be. The rest is now up to the user and his/her tools of choice.

    [edited by: DrDoc at 4:12 am (utc) on July 13, 2007]

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