Re: W3C recommends: Avoid ASCII Art

ilt...@sci.fi (Ilmari Karonen) wrote:

  Dave Bird---St Hippo of Augustine (Dev...@xemu.demon.co.uk) wrote:
 : In art<6bhpv4$2js$1...@tron.sci.fi>, Ilmari Karonen <ilt...@sci.fi>
writes
 : >Lennert Stock (lst...@lstock.demon.nl) wrote:
 : >: Read on http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/WD-WAI-PAGEAUTH-0203.html, the
 : >: World Wide Web Consortium's new Web Accessibility Initiative Draft
 : >: Guidelines:
 : >:
 : >: >6.[RECOMMENDED] 
 : >: >Avoid ASCII art. Replace it with an image and alternative text.
 : >: >Common typographic characters or constructions to be avoided are
 : >: >emoticons, arrows consisting of dashes and greater than
 : >: >signs (e.g., -->), etc.

>: Perhaps someone should reply if they are looking for comment?
>: All they mean is  "Do not mix ascii-art into ordinary HTNL text
>: (such drawings belong in separate preformatted blocks), because it
>: may clash with HTML elements:  smileys :-> and arrows --> using
>: the greaterthan sign are particularly disruptive.  Replace them with
>: an image and alternative text."

>No, I don't think that's it. The document from which the excerpt is taken
>is about making web pages accessible to people with disabilities etc.
>Ascii art doesn't do well on a non-textual medium. It sounds horrible
>when read by a speech synthetizer, and I suspect it appears no better on
>a braille terminal. And of course, search engines are effectively blind,
>so the same considerations apply.

Yes, these guidelines do make sense with your remarks in mind.

>What they mean is "Using ascii art on pages may make then inaccessible
>to blind readers." Arrows are fine from an HTML point of view, as long
>as you remember to use &gt; and &lt;.

>  --&gt; like this &lt;--

Now I'm confused again.
I reckon a speech synthesizer will make this sentence sound like "hyphen
hyphen right angle bracket like this left angle bracket hyphen hyphen"
or "dash dash waka like this waka dash dash" - depending on the model.
So shouldn't the use of &gt; and &lt; in this way be discouraged too?
Shouldn't it be recommended the &gt; and &lt; must only be used in
equations?

>One-line ascii pics such as smileys are merely the most common ones.

Maybe the use of --> is explicitly discouraged because it resembles the
ending comment tag.

bye,
mic

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