ZEN The Road to Enlightenment... or NOT?

Sniff, I wish i could provide a text equivalent for every non-text element, and get my CSS to validate, Sniff!

//ignore it he didnt get the idea off minute44//

Hold your horses!

That's not what I said!

I said it's the most user-friendly site I'd seen. Mentioned nothing about it's valididty.

For the love of crap, trig, drop it will you.

I've been your mate for years.... but you're wrong here. You might be able to recite the exact wording of the WCAG guidelines but I'd bet Mike knows the practical use of web accessibility far, far better than you do. Satisfying every crazy demand of some robot isn't accessibility, even if said robot tells you it is.

Hey I aint the giving people a pat on the back for putting "Validation" marks on my site even though they don't validate!

and yeah its not bad for that, shame he used an image in his header when text would look the same, and improve his keyword density

As before, you pressed a button and accepted the result without engaging your brain.

It is valid CSS 3. There's no W3C commandment that says, "Thou shalt only use CSS 2.1; for verily, such is the default profile of our most holy validator."


About access keys: it's not just my browser. This is a widespread problem, because accesskeys are an immature standard. I've read numerous analyses of this topic; a quick Google search offers this description of the problem, for example.

Don't get me wrong: I think they are a great idea. But they aren't reliable enough yet. The potential accessibility damage is enormous; and since it's difficult to discover access keys, the likely reward is small. This standard needs to mature before it does more harm than good.


About the WCAG: I've already quoted the relevant sections. There's not much more I can offer to help you understand the issue.


About automated validation checks: they are a useful checklist, and I go through them every now and again. But you need to interpret their warnings.

About Tabindex: (Correct me if I'm wrong here Mike) Tabindex is, to all intents and purposes, a safety net for markup that has not been written in a logical order to begin with. The "Good practice" you should strive for is not the use of the tabindex attribute but ensuring that it need not be used at all.

The same goes for Forms although a logical tab order within a form can be more difficult to achieve so they are more excusable here. That said you should still strive for a logical order through the logical ordering of your markup.

That's right.

The tabindex is simply the order in which interactive elements will be cycled through when a user presses the "tab" key (or whatever key has been assigned this function).

This is why skip links should be the first links in the document: so they are immediately available on tabbing.

If, for whatever reason, your source order results in a tabindex that is not good for users, then you can change it with the tabindex attribute.

There's nothing wrong with tweaking your tabindex; but for most logically ordered pages, it should be unnecessary.

Would you agree that a logical ordering of markup is more favourable than doctoring it later with the tabindex attribute?

Yes, I would expect it to be better, simply because a logical ordering of markup implies more graceful degradation. If the markup is ordered logically, then content will be presented in a logical order to a screen reader.

There might be special cases where the order of reading is not the same as the order of tabbing through interactive elements. But I can't imagine any right now.

Still, it's good that there's an override mechanism in case I ever need it. But I find it comical that some designers are going through all their links and manually assigning tabindex in source order, with the result that nothing different happens.

Would be best practise to include it as standard, and then there would be no need to go back and change period.

Either way people are endorsing the fact that its fine to say that ones site is valid when its not!

It's like saying nuclear war is bad... oh wait its Iraq, no its fine! Or "That plumber has a corgi registered sticker on his van, however he isnt, nevermind he isnt fitting my boiler!"

I agree. It's a handy attribute to have.

My point is that the WCAG stipulation that a logical tab order must be in place is just as doable by writing your markup in a logical order as it is by adding a tabindex attribute to every link.

As such, the tabindex attributes on Hugh Frost Garden Design are probably utterly needless.

There you are using the word "valid" when talking about accessibility again....

Useless maybe, but it says in a logical order, it doesn't say, "if its already logical order by code then its fine" nor does it say otherwise.

Valid, Certified, etc whatever same difference, just a different way of looking at it!

This thread makes me LOL!

"Valid" is a formal notion. An argument may be valid yet incorrect (false premise); HTML may be valid yet badly used ("unsemantic").

"Certified" suggests approval by a certifying agency. The quality of certification depends on the rigorousness of the certifying process. Automated accessibility checks are weak certifications; all they offer is a helpful checklist.

I agree that it's hypocritical to use conformance badges when your pages don't actually conform. But I think conformance badges are worthless anyway. Do my users care about them? No. So the badges don't belong on my pages.

While I applaud your enthusiasm for accessibility, I suggest you temper your zeal a little. It's hard for any site to be completely bulletproof; and shooting down Zen Garden is in bad taste.

Like jamming a broom handle in Stephen Hawking's spokes...

Just so.

I might be able to knock Stephen Hawking over, but he would still be a genius worthy of my awe.

(And there aren't many people of whom I can honestly say that.)

Isn't that on youtube? no... because people would pay to see that! Probs be in the next jackass to be honest, or some southpark episode!

But honestly, Web Accessibility is quickly becoming a legal requirement and debates about it go on and on, same with the standards in which you should conform to.

Already you can get sued if a customer cannot end your shop because you do not have a wheelchair ramp... Have a think about how this will reflect the web, there's clearly a need for standards, and the standards in place now are effective enough, however looking at them could be described as looking through a really dirty window, your vision and perception is blurred as its left a lot to the end coder/designers self certification.

And, without a party/body to manually check the contents and applied a certificate (like a SSL cert) then it will be hard to take it 100% serious.

However, how serious would you take a letter from a solicitor because a user tried to purchase some goods from your eShop and decided it was "Disabled Unfriendly"

Much can be said in either argument, but in a world where just one ramp could cost you millions, shouldn't we think more?

And to wrongly post that your website is following an accessibility standard when it is not, is both misleading and distasteful and could sit you in hot water.


At the end of the day it wont be long until some firm guidelines will be laid down (as they are already) and we have to abide, or face the danger of possible legal action.

It depends on who and what you are on how seriously you will take accessibility, but hopefully reading this may change your view on things slightly,or enough to reconsider some things in the future

Thanks