What I should have said is, Validation is a waste of time for me. I'm not saying I don't make mistakes but I don't tend to make mistakes like that cos the software I use closes tage for me. It still happens ocassionally, I won't deny the fact, but it certainly isn't regular.

And your post makes me think. I mean, is validation just a spellchecker or is it there to ensure you're using valid code. Let's face it, the sort of people who get errors for invalid (ie. out of date, inaccessible) markup aren't going to be designing with accessibility in mind are they. So even if they validate their sites they still probably won't be that accessible, better certainly but there should be no half measures when it comes to these sorts of things. Likewise, standards based designers with accessibility in mind wouldn't dream of putting invalid code in their site as long as they had the knowledge so don't particularly need to check if its ok.

I know I started this thread to both express and opinion and to gauge other's thoughts on the matter so I am not about to say that you are wrong; you're not. I also don't have a great problem with your (or anyone elses) working practices (who am I to judge?). If people want to validate then I'm fine with that but I am not impressed at all when validation is a developer/designer's 'accessibility bit'. It goes much further than that.

Likewise the fact that I don't validate (I do usually, I just don't do the checks) isn't me saying Validation is rubbish don't do it, even if it may have sounded like that. All I wanted from this thread is for people to think about why validation exists and tackle any issues from that angle. The critique pages of this forum are a good example, you get "that doesn't validate, sort it out" a lot more often than "where are your skip links, alt text and link titles?", which I think in many cases would be more beneficial than a perfectly valid site. Both would be preferable but this is not a perfect world.

Pete.