Accessibility validation

Now i have my W3C strict validation (and a trivial change to do for CSS
validation, which i keep forgetting) -
i have decided to go for accessibility validation :-)

I seem to have lost the W3C validator link; so i'm using "bobby" at
http://www.cast.org/bobby/

Along with a number of warnings -
the only show-stopped is my nav bar; as links are "separated only by white
space" which is a no-no for this validation.
(They nerge in a text-only browser, i need a seperator symbol).

So i decided to insert a pipe symbol, but in the same colour as the
menu-background -  so it would be invisible to user with graphic browsers.
I assume that it will show in a text-only browser, but i haven't got me a
text-only browser to check up in).
(And i don;t want this to mess up my central alignment)

So i changed all my nav links to
<a href="HHMain.htm"        class="NavButton" id="mnuMain" >Main <span
class="splitBar">|</span></a>

with
.splitBar {color:#71ad78 }

(yes, I *know* <span> is not to be used; but i want this pipe next to the
link but with a style of its own, to make it invisible).
But it still goes onto a new line, on its own, so spreading all my nav
buttons out

As i type, it's at
http://mysite.freeserve.com/bbm/hagar/HH/HHAbout.htm

(the bottom 3 buttons, colour currently rather inconsistent but not yet set
to invisible).
I think that each pipe gets a new line becasue the  NavButton class is
defined as

.NavButton {
display:block;  width: 130px;  height: 18px;
padding: 2px;
border:3px outset #99cc99;
margin:3px;
background:#71ad78;
font: small Verdana;
text-align:center;
text-decoration: none;
}

but my questions are really:
1/ Is it acceptable to have a pipe the same colour as the background, to
allow Bobby accessibility validation?
2/ How do i get my pipe next to my nav button (without messing up the
central alignment of the link text)?
3/ What would be the most elegant way to get my accessibility validation -
as i really don;t *like* this method -
it is an awful lot of html, and uses the <span> tag (which i have been
"encouraged not to ;-) " -
and I only do so now as an attempt to get validation, as i cannot think of a
better way! .

Many thanks for any ideas on this one -

hilma    <-- collecting validation stickers as fast as i can ;-)
--x-----

HTML: hwg-basics mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA