I have not made a study of the accessibility guidelines in depth, but my guess would be that they are referring to elements that can be resized like text rather than positional elements and that confusion arises because of vagueness like that. Just a thought, probably wrong, but hey. :)
------------------ Iain Gardiner http://www.firelightning.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andy Budd Sent: 30 July 2004 10:47 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [WSG] Fixed vs flexible layouts Hi folks, Everybody has an opinion on fixed vs flexible layouts. Some people prefer how fixed width sites look, and there is little doubt that they are easier to build. Others hate the whitespace around fixed width designs, thinking they look ridiculous on large monitors. For a site to get a AA accessibility rating, you are supposed to use relative units (%, em) rather than fixed units (px). However the WAI guidelines do say that, if you use fixed units, you must make sure that your site is usable. Personal preferences aside, what "accessibility" problems to people see with fixed width layouts and what are the scale of these problems. Could the same arguments hold true for "elastic layouts" (layouts based on ems) and do "flexible layouts" (those based on %) have their own accessibility issues? Is it acceptable for the vast majority of fixed width CSS based sites to claim AA compliance if all other priority 1 and 2 checkpoints are met? Andy Budd http://www.message.uk.com/ ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ***************************************************** ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help *****************************************************
