[WEB4LIB] Re: text only pages

[Kevin W. Bishop]

Thank you to everyone who responded so quickly to my msg. on text only
pages.  

As the venerable Thomas Dowling mentioned, the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines do indeed encourage the use text only ("text equivalent") pages if
and only if  the original is not accessible and does not transform gracefully
across a variety of user agents.  

Specifically, Guideline 11 states:

http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT-TECHS/#text-equivalent 
http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/#gl-use-w3c

Guideline 11. 
Use W3C technologies (according to specification) and follow accessibility 
guidelines. Where it is not possible to use a W3C technology, or doing so
results in material 
that does not transform gracefully, provide an alternative version of the
content that is accessible.

11.4 
If, after best efforts, you cannot create an accessible page, provide a
link to
an alternative page 
that uses W3C technologies, is accessible, has equivalent information (or
functionality), and is 
updated as often as the inaccessible (original) page. [Priority 1] (Checkpoint
11.4 in guidelines) 
Refer to 3.3 Alternative pages 


Since our upper level pages appear to have "Double-A" (Priorities 1 and 2)
conformance to the guidelines, I'm going to leave it at that.

Cheers,
-kb


>> My question: with a web page that validates and meets basic
>accessibility
>> guidelines, what benefit does a text-only version provide users?
>>

______________________________________
Kevin W. Bishop                              
Libraries and Information Services
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute             
<bishopk at rpi.edu> | <http://www.rpi.edu/rpinfo/>