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Subject: Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Docbook xsl stylesheets and accessibilityrequirements?


On Thu, Feb 13, 2003 at 11:08:48AM -0800, Billard, Trish wrote:
> 

> Wow, this started quite the thread.  But what I was really
> looking for is for the HTML (rather than the XHTML), what
> things to meet accessibility requirements do Norm's
> stylesheets already provide?  Examples might be always
> supporting putting an alt attribute for all images,
> allowing resizing of point sizes.  That sort of thing.  My
> HTML output must meet accessibility requirements, so I'm
> going to have to go through and see what checkpoints are
> met and which are not, and design customizations,
> configurations, or overrides where needed.  This is always
> a combination of the XML you get plus the transformation
> you do, so I'll probably be putting in some information
> about "optional" docbook elements or attributes that
> authors MUST include in order to result in accessible HTML
> output.  I don't have much time in which to do this (about
> a week), so I was hoping someone had started a list, or
> there was already documentation about it in existence
> somewhere.  I can share what I find with this list, but my
> work on this will be interrupted by a business trip to
> India, so It'll be in April sometime.

OK, the short answer:
The DocBook XSL stylesheets do a pretty good job of making
it possible to create accessible HTML.  The main features
are:

- Use of class attributes in <div> and <span> element to
permit control of formatting with CSS stylesheets.

- A parameter to turn off inline 'style' attributes
(css.decoration).

- Parameters to convert @role attributes on emphasis,
para, and phrase into class attributes that can be
styled with CSS.

- Parameters to turn off the use of tables for page layout,
used for some formatting features (variablelist.as.table,
segmentedlist.as.table, callout.list.table).

- Support for alt tags in images by adding
<textobject><phrase>blah</></> in each mediaobject.

- Parameter to turn on long descriptions for images.

There are still some hard coded HTML formats that are
not subject to control with CSS, but those are 
falling in number over time.

-- 

Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
Publications Architect                      Santa Cruz, CA  95060
Technical Publications                      voice: (831) 427-7796
The SCO Group                               fax:   (831) 429-1887
                                            email: bobs@sco.com


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