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• Summary implementation report for UAAG 1.0 (this chart shows how the various user agents do or do not comply with the UAAG)
• User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group Test Suites

Also of interest in the same area are;

• Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (Wombat)
• Authoring Tool Conformance Evaluations
• Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) 1.0

Also of interest in the same area are;

• Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (Wombat)
• Authoring Tool Conformance Evaluations
• Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) 1.0

Also of interest in the same area are;

• Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (Wombat)
• Authoring Tool Conformance Evaluations
• Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) 1.0

Also of interest in the same area are;

• Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (Wombat)
• Authoring Tool Conformance Evaluations
• Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) 1.0

Also of interest in the same area are;

• Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (Wombat)
• Authoring Tool Conformance Evaluations
• Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) 1.0

Hopefully this initiative will drive the production of better browsers (user agents) and web development that will facilitate services to users.

User agents are improving on the implementation of the HTTP_ACCEPT header for determining MIME types the user agent will accept. This great potential was missed with Netscape Navigator 2 because, in the rush to get it to market, they just defaulted to using *.* (this browser accepts everything), when it didn't. If this was implemented correctly it would allow the developer to deliver media according to the user agents capacity.

Also see User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 and the UAAG discussion list.

Hopefully this initiative will drive the production of better browsers (user agents) and web development that will facilitate services to users.

User agents are improving on the implementation of the HTTP_ACCEPT header for determining MIME types the user agent will accept. This great potential was missed with Netscape Navigator 2 because, in the rush to get it to market, they just defaulted to using *.* (this browser accepts everything), when it didn't. If this was implemented correctly it would allow the developer to deliver media according to the user agents capacity.

Also see User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 and the UAAG discussion list.

There is always HTML Tidy. That page also has links to programs (some binary, some source) that use the HTML Tidy program in very constructive ways. Years ago, I used it to replace Word HTML with simple HTML and got elegant style sheets (i.e. no more infinite font declarations, just one or two at the top).

XML was designed to be machine-readable, not human-readable, much less human-understandable, or easily-reverse-engineerable.

1) XML, SOAP and all these new technologies were pioneered by Microsoft

Really?

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<B><A HREF="http://whatever.org"> Link </B></A>.

I'm not kidding, either. Seems like an easy thing to avoid in an HTML generator. Validator routinely reports hundreds of coding errors in simple short documents generated by Word. Ugh. What really sucks is when you're working on a web page for someone and cleaning out all the crap that Word generates, then at the last minute they send you the same document with some minor errors corrected.... and all the same major errors generated by Word. Fun.

Microsoft is part of the W3C, and help make many of these standards. If you look at the acknowledgments [w3.org] you'll see Microsoft is actually a member of the working group responsible for these guidelines.

Haahahaa (sorry, I couldn't help myself). This explains why hugely respected accessibility expert Mark Pilgrim slated the MS site redesign in October then (as did Zeldman)? See the news post over at the Web Standards Project (scroll to the bottom of the page).

In summary: Invalid. Inaccessible. Undecipherable in a text-only browser.

Don't get me wrong, Microsoft have some fantastic employees such as Tantek Çelik (who's site kicks major ass BTW) who care passionately about standards, but MS doesn't seem to want to listen most of the time...

Microsoft is part of the W3C, and help make many of these standards. If you look at the acknowledgments [w3.org] you'll see Microsoft is actually a member of the working group responsible for these guidelines.

Haahahaa (sorry, I couldn't help myself). This explains why hugely respected accessibility expert Mark Pilgrim slated the MS site redesign in October then (as did Zeldman)? See the news post over at the Web Standards Project (scroll to the bottom of the page).

In summary: Invalid. Inaccessible. Undecipherable in a text-only browser.

Don't get me wrong, Microsoft have some fantastic employees such as Tantek Çelik (who's site kicks major ass BTW) who care passionately about standards, but MS doesn't seem to want to listen most of the time...

There is a glaring problem with Opera 7's much-touted "PDA support." Opera does not automatically pick up stylesheets declared as media="handheld". In other words, instead of using a stylesheet that specifically formats a page for PDAs and handheld devices, Opera will try to reformat the page on its own.

That's a pretty neat trick for pages whose designers aren't thinking about the bigger picture (the Hiptop does something similar), but a real pain in the ass for those of us who are building pages "the right way" (i.e. XHTML for content, CSS for layout). This is particularly annoying in that Opera claims to fully support W3C CSS Mobile Profile 1.0. As far as I can tell, it doesn't.

Microsoft is part of the W3C, and help make many of these standards. If you look at the acknowledgments you'll see Microsoft is actually a member of the working group responsible for these guidelines.

I signed the Open Letter long ago, not because I agreed with every point, but because it was good to see something stir up some noise. I also licensed my thesis under the PLoS license, not because I think it has much legal value (it confuses "public domain" with RMS' concept of copyleft), but because I think that if anybody wants to copy that thesis, it can only help me, and besides the fuzz you created was great! As it turns out, all of those of my childhood friends who have become scientists have independently signed the Open Letter! :-)

One of my main beefs with the PLoS is the insistence of a centralized archive. True, it may be easier to build something good on the top of for example the existing Arxiv.org (I'm an astrophysicist), but decentralization is one of the fundamental principles of the web. It is wise to learn as much as possible from these architectural principles, and make use of them as fast as possible.

I have for long wanted to write an article with the many thoughts I have in my head, but time has not allowed me to. The future of scientific publishing is perhaps the topic that I would most like to work with.

I noted in the Nature debate (which I submitted a link to some time ago), that some of the non-profit publishers wouldn't let go of their published articles because they couldn't ensure the integrity of the articles. This has a rather obvious technical solution to most people here on Slashdot, in the form of signatures. Now that XML Signature is a W3C Recommendation, I think it is just a matter of implementing it, the problem is really solved.

As for finance (now comes the excuse for posting in this thread), it is a problem that needs addressing for the whole Internet community. Many different modes should be available, for example, a nice, printed journal set by a professional typographer will not seize to be attractive although the article is available on the web. Some may well find a steady income there. Also, micropayments is something that is worth checking out.

I would personally like to work on those solutions, so if anybody is hiring... :-)

I signed the Open Letter long ago, not because I agreed with every point, but because it was good to see something stir up some noise. I also licensed my thesis under the PLoS license, not because I think it has much legal value (it confuses "public domain" with RMS' concept of copyleft), but because I think that if anybody wants to copy that thesis, it can only help me, and besides the fuzz you created was great! As it turns out, all of those of my childhood friends who have become scientists have independently signed the Open Letter! :-)

One of my main beefs with the PLoS is the insistence of a centralized archive. True, it may be easier to build something good on the top of for example the existing Arxiv.org (I'm an astrophysicist), but decentralization is one of the fundamental principles of the web. It is wise to learn as much as possible from these architectural principles, and make use of them as fast as possible.

I have for long wanted to write an article with the many thoughts I have in my head, but time has not allowed me to. The future of scientific publishing is perhaps the topic that I would most like to work with.

I noted in the Nature debate (which I submitted a link to some time ago), that some of the non-profit publishers wouldn't let go of their published articles because they couldn't ensure the integrity of the articles. This has a rather obvious technical solution to most people here on Slashdot, in the form of signatures. Now that XML Signature is a W3C Recommendation, I think it is just a matter of implementing it, the problem is really solved.

As for finance (now comes the excuse for posting in this thread), it is a problem that needs addressing for the whole Internet community. Many different modes should be available, for example, a nice, printed journal set by a professional typographer will not seize to be attractive although the article is available on the web. Some may well find a steady income there. Also, micropayments is something that is worth checking out.

I would personally like to work on those solutions, so if anybody is hiring... :-)

Actually Hotbot is using xhtml 1.0 strict which is a W3C reccomendation (remember W3C are not a standards organisation unlike ISO) which Mozilla does have support for as well as IE.

Unfortunatly Hotbot doesn't validate due to they are still supporting Netscape 4 via a Layer tag and a single custom tag which the validator doesnt like either, but they should still be praised for accepting W3C reccomendations and keeping up with browser technology , whereas some search engines or websites don't bother to even try.

Actually Hotbot is using xhtml 1.0 strict which is a W3C reccomendation (remember W3C are not a standards organisation unlike ISO) which Mozilla does have support for as well as IE.

Unfortunatly Hotbot doesn't validate due to they are still supporting Netscape 4 via a Layer tag and a single custom tag which the validator doesnt like either, but they should still be praised for accepting W3C reccomendations and keeping up with browser technology , whereas some search engines or websites don't bother to even try.

Actually Hotbot is using xhtml 1.0 strict which is a W3C reccomendation (remember W3C are not a standards organisation unlike ISO) which Mozilla does have support for as well as IE.

Unfortunatly Hotbot doesn't validate due to they are still supporting Netscape 4 via a Layer tag and a single custom tag which the validator doesnt like either, but they should still be praised for accepting W3C reccomendations and keeping up with browser technology , whereas some search engines or websites don't bother to even try.

Actually Hotbot is using xhtml 1.0 strict which is a W3C reccomendation (remember W3C are not a standards organisation unlike ISO) which Mozilla does have support for as well as IE.

Unfortunatly Hotbot doesn't validate due to they are still supporting Netscape 4 via a Layer tag and a single custom tag which the validator doesnt like either, but they should still be praised for accepting W3C reccomendations and keeping up with browser technology , whereas some search engines or websites don't bother to even try.

This is encouraging - looks like TerraLycos is continuing the work that was done with Wired's conversion to a table-free design. Too bad it doesn't validate, though.

CSS in an article from opera.com? Are you sure it isn't this kind of CSS they are discussing in that article? ;)

News:Closely watched copyright case goes to jury - San Francisco Chronicle - 2 hours ago
Groups at odds over hidden copyright fees - The Globe and Mail - 11 Dec 2002
Defense rests in ElcomSoft copyright trial - San Jose Mercury News - 10 Dec 2002
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Be conservative in what you generate, liberal in what you accept.

I don't like Internet Exploder. I don't really like Netscrape, either. But I won't fault either for rendering a page that's not completely standards compliant; I'd guess that 95% of the pages out there wouldn't render if the browsers were as strict as, for example, the HTML validator.

1. The source must validate. This rule applies to both (X)HTML and CSS
2. Allowed doctypes are HTML 4.01 Strict, XHTML 1.0 Strict and XHTML 1.1. For styling, anything up to CSS2 is allowed. Conditional comments are disallowed because they would make the contest too easy.
3. Page must be readable with Mozilla 1.2 and Opera 7.0 (beta)
4. The winner the one with the most artistic rendering in MSIE6/win32, combined with unreadable source.
5. Extra points, if page is still readable in the Netscape Navigator 4.x.
6. No scripting is allowed.

I think you could get pretty interesting results by layering elements one over another and creating resulting images with interfere patterns caused by letters laid over other letters. Use CSS features that MSIE doesn't implement, or has bugs in, to correct the positioning in correctly behaving browsers and @import trick for keeping NN4.x in the game.

Creating page that works only in one nonstandard browser is too easy. Creating standards compliant page that works in every browser but one buggy one should be hard enough.

1. The source must validate. This rule applies to both (X)HTML and CSS
2. Allowed doctypes are HTML 4.01 Strict, XHTML 1.0 Strict and XHTML 1.1. For styling, anything up to CSS2 is allowed. Conditional comments are disallowed because they would make the contest too easy.
3. Page must be readable with Mozilla 1.2 and Opera 7.0 (beta)
4. The winner the one with the most artistic rendering in MSIE6/win32, combined with unreadable source.
5. Extra points, if page is still readable in the Netscape Navigator 4.x.
6. No scripting is allowed.

I think you could get pretty interesting results by layering elements one over another and creating resulting images with interfere patterns caused by letters laid over other letters. Use CSS features that MSIE doesn't implement, or has bugs in, to correct the positioning in correctly behaving browsers and @import trick for keeping NN4.x in the game.

Creating page that works only in one nonstandard browser is too easy. Creating standards compliant page that works in every browser but one buggy one should be hard enough.

Break what rules? Style Sheets is the standard for HTML formatting according to W3C.

I hate to say it, but it may be time to suck it up admit the reality that continued funding of the ISS is good money after bad. Whole careers have been poured into it, and AT LEAST $40 billion current-year dollars (prob. much more), and there's little prospect we'll have much to show for it. And no, it ain't no waystation to Mars or the Moon. This would largely ground the shuttle, but that wold also save big bucks.

For the same billions, we could mount really aggressive Mars and Europa programs and learn how to build a lunar colony.

BTW, please see next time you want to post a long URL.

And what is the attitude of slashdot editors to criticism? Just try parsing this page through the W3 XML Validator.

XHTML intro

CSS intro (you don't want to use XHTML without CSS)

Javascript

Good luck.

Almost all css sites I have used have been really slow when scrolling (this was on Opera and Mozilla, I don't know about IE). With a different div for each comment I imagine this might be fscking slow, although I should point out I'm a programmer not a web developer.

stylesheets are implemented differently in different browsers, and the implementations are bound to be more dynamic than tables. The bugs for tables have been worked out why do it again for css.

Isn't slashcode opensource? Why don't you go in and fix it yourself if it bothers you?

To support these entities [like #8221 etc], user agents may support full [ISO10646 (=Unicode)] or use other means. Display of glyphs for these characters may be obtained by being able to display the relevant [ISO10646] characters or by other means, such as internally mapping the listed entities, numeric character references, and characters to the appropriate position in some font that contains the requisite glyphs.

I got the following unexpected response when trying to retrieve <http://slashdot.org>:

403 Forbidden

Please make sure you have entered the URI correctly.

> but you guys should at least have removed the [...] tags from his document. It is extremely bad form to insert a whole html document inside another one.

Huuuuhhh... You're talking about Slashdot, the website for standards-loving geeks and nerds who doesn't even validate (and note that they've forbidden entry to validator.w3.org to hide the fact). In comparison, another site where I dwell, LinuxFR; not only validates but doesn't use old-fashioned table-based layouts, ditched in favor of more modern and user-customisable floating layers. To this day, I'm still ashamed at the sheer number of sites (even Linux/OSS/Free Software ones) that don't even do the minimum to be good netizens : provide an error-free site with a DOCTYPE that triggers standards-compliance mode in browsers. I shouldn't maybe draw conclusions too fast (some of these sites could still use non-standards-compliant middleware like ad banners generators and the like. I believe I remember Wired's Douglas Bowman said this were the major cause hampering efforts towards compliance) but I think the main problem lies with the laziness and the usual if it works with IE, it works nearly everywhere state of mind. And you can throw all the blows and whistles you want into your new shiny standards to attract followers, you cannot overcome laziness... *sigh*

> but you guys should at least have removed the [...] tags from his document. It is extremely bad form to insert a whole html document inside another one.

Huuuuhhh... You're talking about Slashdot, the website for standards-loving geeks and nerds who doesn't even validate (and note that they've forbidden entry to validator.w3.org to hide the fact). In comparison, another site where I dwell, LinuxFR; not only validates but doesn't use old-fashioned table-based layouts, ditched in favor of more modern and user-customisable floating layers. To this day, I'm still ashamed at the sheer number of sites (even Linux/OSS/Free Software ones) that don't even do the minimum to be good netizens : provide an error-free site with a DOCTYPE that triggers standards-compliance mode in browsers. I shouldn't maybe draw conclusions too fast (some of these sites could still use non-standards-compliant middleware like ad banners generators and the like. I believe I remember Wired's Douglas Bowman said this were the major cause hampering efforts towards compliance) but I think the main problem lies with the laziness and the usual if it works with IE, it works nearly everywhere state of mind. And you can throw all the blows and whistles you want into your new shiny standards to attract followers, you cannot overcome laziness... *sigh*

Not to toot my own horn, but I've accomplished this sort of thing on my own at http://thirtyfour.org - the website is entirely readable without any extraneous formatting whatsoever.

What do you want, a cookie?

Your site doesn't validate, so stop with the tooting.

The preformance of the FPL programmers working with very extremely complex requirements will always outrun the performance of C programmers. And that is more important than the runtime performance (remember Javaistic argumets about cheap and fast hardware resources?). There are many cases when run-time performance of FP programs will be better than C one, as most of low level details are already optimized and hidden in libraries and interpreters, while C programmers are still moving through lots of errors and mistakes in their reinventing the wheel projects.

The only problem is that all stupid managers, after reading commercials, don't want anythng else, but only C, Java and VB. I heard about projects where people use XML syntax for interpreted Lisp or Scheme code because they can tell the boss: "look, boss, it's not Lisp, it's just XML". Managers today just love XML and usually buy the trick. No wonder there is an official project of "flat" and XML notations for Curry, the language with Haskell and Prolog ideas.

HTML Tidy has a 'clean up Word HTML' mode which works wonders. Dave Raggett developed it for W3C.

HTML Tidy has a 'clean up Word HTML' mode which works wonders. Dave Raggett developed it for W3C.

To explain that in english, when the browser is restored to a smaller page, and the left nav is say set at 20% and the right nav at 80% width, if the graphic is set at a certain size and becomes larger than the width of the left nav, then this will overlap text in the middle nav.

And another question. Accessibility means making websites accessible to all people, with different browsers and different disabilities. What do you feel about web designers designing for "look" rather than compatibility. I know a lot of designers only check that their site "looks pretty" in IE (idiots for using it!) and ignore all other browsers.

Frankly, the impression I get when I hear "accessible websites" is that they will appear spartan and/or dated. (your website is a good example, ATTAIN, Inc. a non-profit accessibility provider and previous employer is another)

This is all very well for government or non-profit sites that are services for awareness and public information; all US government and most US non-profits are compelled by law to abide by some accessibility guidelines. They aren't the problem, private businesses and entities are. The impressions of "accessibility" is at odds with business sites that need to "capture" visitors with compelling visuals and/or content before they move on to the competition. The fact that typical internet user attention spans are measured in seconds and waning fast is a major drive of the design of online commerce sites.

How can the goals of business and "access for all" coexist? Do any examples of fully accessible sites that are also compelling enough to compete in today's online business environment exist?

"Do you think Section 508 is a good model for private industry to use?"

Nope. I don't think it's good for public industry use either.

Fails all over the place.

Slashdot isn't even w3c compliant.

Save the source from a page and load it into this validator.

To put it bluntly, in this regard, Slashdot sucks.

The site is absolutely littered with horrible, nonstandard HTML, broken tags, tables, markup hacks, and other things that would confuse the bejesus out of any web accessibility tools.

Of course, the first step to solving this problem would be to overhaul Slashdot to resemble SOME form of web standards-compliance. That single step would improve accessibility tenfold. Instead, Slashdot has decided to ignore the problem and pretend it doesn't exist. I noticed they actually went so far as to block the w3c's validator from accessing Slashdot. (When you try to validate it, the validator complains that it received a 403.)

For such a widely popular website, Slashdot is poorly constructed, and has made no effort whatsoever to rectify the problem. For an example of a really nicely created site, take a look at Wired sometime. Run a page or two of theirs through the validator. View their source. They've learned to favor div tags over tables for formatting, and their pages actually validate properly.

The first step to accessibility is valid HTML. If you want to go further, there are some good resources available.

Since this is something I do on a daily basis at work, allow me to go over some of the things I do to make sure a web site is accessible.
First of all, layout of a page is important. Framesets are poorly implemented in text-only browsers and screen readers. Things are getting better, but they're not perfect yet.
Standards. I really can't stress this enough. My experience has taught me that following the government's Section 508 and W3C's Accessibility standards offer the widest range of compatibility with accessibility software. Additionally, using XHTML 1.0 Transitional works better than strict or HTML 4.01. Although it seems logical to follow these rules, there are a lot of websites that still use tables for layout (hell on a screen reader) or forget image alt tags. Despite following these, I do miss a lot.
My preference for writing web pages is to use NotePad (I'm sorry, the whole office runs Windows and I am not allowed to use Linux/Unix) to write my pages. None of that FrontPage or DreamWeaver or WYSIWYG stuff for me. FrontPage seems to take joy in proprietary tags, DreamWeaver has plug-ins available for accessibility but they are lacking.
To cover for my own lapses when authoring, I turn to a number of tools. Running EVERY page through W3C's various validators is very helpful. Although all that gets me is standard's compliant page, its less work later when I use a text browser and screen reader. Along those lines, I check every page in Lynx (yippee for cygwin) and JAWS. Both are very helpful in making them all accessible.
Perhaps the greatest tool at my disposal is an actual blind person. She has been instrumental in learning how to create accessible pages. Sticking to the standards just doesn't always cut it.
All in all, it has really become second nature to write HTML that is accessible. Once one gets in the groove of things, its very easy.
In conclusion, writing accessible code depends a lot on adhering to standards, but writing logically and cleanly does a world of wonder towards making clean HTML code.

Aural Cascading Style Sheets (ACSS), part of the new CSS 2 working draft, promises incredibly simple integration of speech output in web pages. Web developers will easily be able to have their web pages speak to the visually impaired in multiple voices, volumes, and even position the voice! Why then, are there no implementations of this for any commercial browser, and why aren't developers embracing this powerful technology?
The ONLY implementation of any sort is Emacspeak!

What's your opinion about the Section 508 laws in that they almost ignore the existence of the work developed by the W3C's WAI group?

Why have the USA created a different set of rules? We all have learned that having several standards is always worst than a single one. Developers don't want to worry about which standard to implement

Why haven't they done the same as other countries that simply adapted WAI standards?

From W3C's comment on Section 508:

In diverging from evolving consensus on Web accessibility, the provisions in the NPRM have the effect of fragmenting the industry standard rather than harmonizing with voluntary consensus industry standards as advised by a U.S. Government directive. Should the proposed provisions go into effect as is, Sec. 508 would not only fail to take advantage of supporting provisions for accessibility in Web-based authoring tools, browsers, accessibility checkers, and existing training materials; but also complicate implementation of accessibility features in these products, potentially increasing the cost of compliance.