Edit comment LC-867 for Accessibility Guidelines Working Group

Quick access to

Previous: LC-829 Next: LC-934

Comment LC-867: Comment Shortname:; Commenter: Joe Clark 2 <joeclark@joeclark.org>; Message-id:; Section of the document concerned:

or; Refinement of the section concerned:; Status:
assigned to; Type:; Resolution status:
Response drafted Resolution implemented Reply sent to commenter; Response status:
No response from Commenter yet Commenter approved disposition Commenter objected to disposition
Commenter's response (URI):; Comment:
I argued with the Working Group for months over the concept of semantics in markup, that is, the use of the correct element for the content. This argument betrayed the Group's arrogance and its thorough incomptence at standards-compliant Web authoring. It also proved they've been asleep at the wheel for the last eight years, in which people like me have been labouring to improve Web standards. This nonsense alone is enough to generate suspicion and distrust among competent and up-to-date Web developers.

Nonetheless, now the word ""semantics"" is included, without elaboration or definition, in the Understanding and Techniques documents (whose examples I am condensing into one excerpt below). Occasionally, the term is recast as ""structure.""

From http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2006May/0119.html

1. A simple text document is formatted with double blank lines before titles, asterisks to indicate list items and other standard formatting conventions so that its structure can be programmatically determined.
2. HTML Techniques for Marking Text [...] [11]Using semantic markup to mark emphasized or special text
3. Making information and relationships conveyed through presentation programmatically determinable USING the technology-specific techniques below (for a technology in your baseline) [...] [12]Using semantic elements to mark up structure [...] The semantics of some elements define whether or not their content is a meaningful sequence. For instance, in HTML, text is always a meaningful sequence. Tables and ordered lists are meaningful sequences, but unordered lists are not.
4. CSS Techniques [...] [13]Positioning content based on structural markup

The WCAG main document does a drive-by and just barely avoids mentioning semantics by name:

[INS: [Content] :INS] includes the code and markup that define the structure, presentation, and interaction, as well as text, images, and sounds that convey information to the end-user.

This means your markup is also your content, which will come as a surprise to those who are interested in separation of content, structure, presentation, and behaviour. Here, ""markup that define the structure, presentation, and interaction"" clearly refers to semantics.; Related issues: 1180
(space separated ids); WG Notes: [TEAMA] @@add definition of "Relationship" and a definition of "Semantic" to the glossary as defined below. Discussion: I'll divide this up into two peices 1) Joes' comments about no definition for Semantic 2) Joe's comments about "markup" being wrongly included in the definition of "Content". Part one: Joe's comments about Semantic The word Semantic in the understanding doc is correctly used in all the cases cited above. The word Semantic currently does not appear in the WCAG 2.0 guidelines. The glossary only covers the Guidelines and there is currently no plan to make a glossary for the "Understanding Document" Part 2: Joe's comments that "Markup" shouldn't be included in the definition of Content. The principle is: "separate information and structure from presentation " .title {text-size: 200%} is presentational and resides separately on the style sheet The markup in the content is <h1 class="title">. This is certainly part of the content. It had meaning. The presentation features (i.e. text-size of 200%) of that title class are on a separate stylesheet. Some markup is absolutely necessary as part of the content. Otherwise we could not identfy anything as a heading or a paragraph. I do not believe we have broken the principle of "separate presentation from content". Discussed in the 13 July 2006 telecon: Accepted by unanimous consent. http://www.w3.org/2006/07/13-wai-wcag-minutes.html {not accept}; Resolution: The principle is "separate information and structure from presentation." .title {text-size: 200%} is presentational and resides separately on the style sheet The markup in the content is <h1 class="title">. This is certainly part of the content. It has meaning. The presentation features (i.e. text-size of 200%) of that title class are on a separate stylesheet. Some markup is absolutely necessary as part of the content. Otherwise we could not identfy anything as a heading or a paragraph. We do not believe we have broken the principle of "separate presentation from content". The definition of "content" has been revised. It now is defined as, "information and sensory experience to be communicated to the user by means of a user agent, as well as code or markup that define the structure, presentation, and interactions associated with those elements" Information and structure should be separated from presentation, and the techniques etc all flow from this. We are careful only to use the word 'semantic' in its 'semantic markup' form since there has been so much misunderstanding around the multiple definitions of semantic.; (Please make sure the resolution is adapted for public consumption)