Re: text for acccessibility / was Re: Another W3C strict query

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew McFarland" <aamcf(at)aamcf.co.uk>
To: <hwg-basics(at)hwg.org>
Sent: Monday, June 03, 2002 12:02 PM
Subject: Re: text fot acccessibility / was Re: Another W3C strict query


> >  <em style="display:none">||</em>
>
> This _isn't_ what you want. First of all, display: none will hide the
pipes
> from all CSS aware browsers, including aural ones.
uh-oh.
But it shows in Lynx, so i thought i finally had solved and met the
accessibility-browser rules and guidelines.
Presumably, aural browsers are specially-purchased add-ons, not
freely-downloadable from the net for testing?
<span style="font-size:xx-small>damn damn damn</span>

> Secondly, the em element should only be used for text that you want to be
emphasized.
I know, i used that as a "short tag" - but have since fixed it to use
<tt>||</tt>
and made
tt {display:none}

even more compact :-)
But still using display:none :-(

> <span class="pipe">||</span>
> with
> span.pipe {color: transparent} in the CSS. This should make the pipes
> invisible in graphic browsers, but `visible' everywhere else, which is
what  you need.

But the problem with that - it messes up the spacing for the visible text in
graphic browsers, if display is not "none";
as space is still reserved for invisible/transparent characters;
so the centrally-aligned text gets shoved-over for color:transparent (I
presume).

> >but when i start tagging every photo (or link) with sensible text plus
"this
> >will open a new window" i'm going to end up with a huge amount of extra
> >bytes.
> Not that many. HTTP 1.1 (....) compresses HTML on the fly. Lots
> of repeated text compresses very nicely.

I hate having repeated text for myself, let alone for the html!
Maintenance is a pig, it means so many more changes when i have to redo
things -
Like, my nav bar has 10 buttons per page, my site has 10 pages, and now you
tell me my result is *still* not acceptable :-(

> The extra text is useful information. You want to keep the useful
> information in the page.
yes, for the pictures i can accept it - but for the repetitions..... roll on
server-side scripting!

Many thanks for your comments - even though you've resurrected a problem i
thought had gone to bed :-(

hilma
-x-----

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