Lindsay Evans wrote:
I'm in the process of defining accessibility guidelines for a new
site, and am thinking it would be helpful to eliminate certain WCAG
checkpoints that are no longer relevant and could possibly lead to
usability problems if followed to the letter
Here are my thoughts on which WCAG 1.0 checkpoints can be knowingly ignored:
10.2 Until user agents support explicit associations between labels and
form controls, for all form controls with implicitly associated labels,
ensure that the label is properly positioned.
(though it's still best practice from a usability point of view)
10.5 Until user agents (including assistive technologies) render
adjacent links distinctly, include non-link, printable characters
(surrounded by spaces) between adjacent links.
(as long as there is at least a single space, and the styling of your
page is clear enough - e.g. maybe a bit of extra horizontal padding for
inline links)
1.5 Until user agents render text equivalents for client-side image map
links, provide redundant text links for each active region of a
client-side image map.
(as far as I know, all modern user agents should cope fine with properly
marked up client-side image map...as long as you provide ALTs for each AREA)
10.3 Until user agents (including assistive technologies) render
side-by-side text correctly, provide a linear text alternative (on the
current page or some other) for all tables that lay out text in
parallel, word-wrapped columns.
(since most AT looks to the document source, rather than simply visually
scraping the screen, this shouldn't cause any more issues)
10.4 Until user agents handle empty controls correctly, include default,
place-holding characters in edit boxes and text areas.
(apart from old braillers, this is not an issue anymore; in fact, having
place-holding content can be a usability issue, as users need to go the
extra step of first deleting the default content)
Unfortunately I don't have an exact list showing what current UAs/ATs
support...this is mainly based on empirical evidence, discussions with
users of specific ATs, and a bit of gut instinct.
Patrick
--
Patrick H. Lauke
__________________________________________________________
re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively
[latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.]
www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk
http://redux.deviantart.com
__________________________________________________________
Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force
http://webstandards.org/
__________________________________________________________
******************************************************
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
******************************************************
