

Text being imperceptible (allegedly)

From: Joe Clark <joeclark@joeclark.org>
Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2005 20:41:19 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.60.0506012034090.19260@aristotle.multipattern.com>

>From the minutes today:


>   bg: tech about using display:none and positioning to create invisible
>   labels
>   js: have issues with display:none

It's in the spec and people can use it.

>   mc: also have issues with display:none; also it is a tech to work
>   around WCAG GL's that people don't like

Three real-world examples, please?

>   js: we need a sc for making text percievable, we are making a default
>   assumption that text is accessible, which is not good [...]
>   js: yeah, we need a guideline, that deals with the inacurate
>   assumption about text being perceivable but I don't want to
>   proliferate
>   guideline

Now, can somebody tell me how text-- which the Working Group from time 
immemorial has privileged over every other data type on the Web-- is 
suddenly not perceivable? You've got guidelines coming out the wazoo 
requiring us to write (using text) in an understandble way; use text 
equivalents; and even use only a certain set of character encodings. The 
Working Group is cuckoo for text. And suddenly it's deemed not 

Is this a way of exaggerating obscure, rarely-seen edge cases--
like styling text with display: none or identical foreground and 
background colours--
or is this yet another way of making the false claim that, since IE/Win 
can't resize text in pixels nothing else can, hence text may never be 
sized in pixels?

Perhaps proponents of this absurd idea could give us three real-world 
examples. You have to demonstrate that there is an actual accessibility 
impact on people with disabilities rather than the site's simply being not 
your cup of tea.


     Joe Clark | joeclark@joeclark.org
     Accessibility <http://joeclark.org/access/>
       --What's wrong with top-posting?
Received on Wednesday, 1 June 2005 20:41:33 UTC
