Standardizing HTML for the future
-Background on HTML, why we have a such messy situation --current and future solutions: CSS, XML, XHTML
-Basic principles of Web accessibility
-Standards and validation -Tips for making your site accessible
-Conclusion: Internet access in the future -- car, cell phone, telephone...refrigerator? A list of resources, including sites, online classes, articles and books will be posted by meeting time.
The most important site is the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web
Accessibility Initiative: http://www.w3.org/WAI/
The HTML Writer's Guild offers a number of online classes. They emphasize validation, standards-compliance and accessibility. They offer an introductory HTML 4.0 class and a class on Web Accessibility, as well as XML, javascript, asp: http://www.hwg.org/
The Web Standards Project: http://www.webstandards.org/
Their mission statement: The WEB STANDARDS PROJECT is a coalition of web developers and users. Our mission is to stop the fragmentation of the web, by persuading browser makers that standards are in everyone's best interest. Together we can make the web accessible to everyone.
Lorraine Angus of aSimpleMachine.com start off by outraging most in attendance. She did this by stating that you can't use tables for Web Page layout and make a Web site accessable to handicapped individuals, nor make it accessable to the moble Web being developed presently. Apparently voice browsers and screen readers are fooled into read line one line at a time, across the columns. This makes gibberish for accesability purposes and for use on a wireless Personal Digital Assistant. She suggests using Cascading Style Sheets to layout your pages.
Lorraine is not alone in her belief that sticking to standards is better.
One of the major searched AltaVista says this about making a Web page easy
to locate by Web Crawlers sent out by Search Engines: "Your rule of
thumb should be to have at least one full set of your content available
in a form that the blind can read."
This may have been the best Web SIG since September 1999. Ms. Angus has
convinced me that HTML 4.0 and its future derivative is the way to go for
standardization in the World Wild Web we live in. It just seemed so need
and tidy to think that someone can take my web code and build on it in the
future without having to depend on the whim of the day Web Page Editor.
The deal is learn, learn, learn HTML 4.0 and the upcoming derivations including
XHTML (Extensible HyperText Markup Language) and WAP (Wireless Application
Protocol).
Like SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), XML can be used for all kinds of document management purposes. One of its uses is display on the web, but that's not all. Its a leaner version of SGML -- some call it "SGML lite." From what I've gathered, some are very critical of this stripped down (or dumbed down) version of SGML (die hards, no doubt!)
In combination with VPN (Virtual Private Network) handling the encrypted transmission across the Internet, and XML/XHTML handling the database work at each end, there is hope that the era of digital business documents may be about to begin for small business. Until the advent of these new technologies, secure digital administration of business data between businesses has been the provence of EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) handling the database work and an expensive VAN (private Value Added Network). The cost of going through a VAN has excluded small businesses from true digital B2B document handling.
Screen readers are the ones that have the biggest problems with tables, reading across the entire desktop. Voice browsers can recognize table cells, but using them for layout can still be confusing. If word wrap is used properly the text should hang together. As far as Personal Digital Assistants and cell phones go, in most cases the tables are "linearized" as in lynx. Another handy to check out how your table layout holds up is lynx me a lynx emulator (lynx does not recognize tables, so if you can understand it in this you're probably in good shape.)
http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/~gerald/lynx-me.cg
Lorraine graciously provided a printed list of links plus a handy palm-sized "Quick Tips To Make Accessible Web Sites" from the W3C.
Here are Web URLs that were mentioned during the meeting that may not be on Lorraine's list:
The Center for Applied Technology http://www.cast.org/
These sites were provided by Jan Limpach
So, You Really Want to See Your Site in Every Possible
Browser? (plus a Web page validator too) at:: http://www.anybrowser.com/
A forwarder that will shorten any long ungainly Web URLS: http://go.to
(Check out http://go.to/web_sig it
works!)
Web SIG Leader: Lee Batdorff, 216-321-9152 Bat@adva.com
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