I'm basically wondering what everyone thinks about validation. Now I know we all think it's wonderful, best thing since sliced bread, responsible for the so much good on the internet and all that. But my question is: is it necessary?

Now don't get me wrong I'm not against validation, it's a good practice. It helps people get in the right mind for accesible coding/development and it can help you discover an unclosed tag or some other error you overlooked. But is it necessary for a site to validate if it's built with semantically corect, accessible code.

I mean I am getting sick of these sites with the little validation buttons for css and xhtml. Sure it's great that they validate but should we overlook the fact that the site is constructed with tables, has no skip links, dozens of images, no alt text, no link titles. These are the things that make a site accesible, validation just makes coders feel superior.

On the other hand should a site be cast off as sub-standard or less than it could be if it doesn't validate. There may be certain elements that you want included in the code that won't validate. It does happen, what then?

With css validation, warnings are common for me. I check my code, make sure it's ok, then ignore them. All validation does in these cases is waste my time. When I build a site I usually don't get many errors, and what I do get I would have picked up through testing and refining the site anyway. My main train of thought is as follows: I've built the site the right way, with the right principles and I know it's accesible so why need I bother with minor irritations like validation.

I'm doubt I'll bother anymore, I've got tools to check for errors in my software and my tags self close (the main error that popped up). But what do you think?

Pete.