Plip's Weblog

Phil Winstanley - British .NET chap based in Lancashire. Enjoys tea and tech. Working for Microsoft.

Dutch accessibility law

http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2007/01/new_dutch_acces.html

 

A few examples will show you where Dutch government accessibility is heading. As of 1 September last year, every website built for a government agency is required by law to use:

  • valid HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0
  • CSS and semantic HTML and separation of structure and presentation
  • progressive enhancement
  • the W3C DOM (instead of the old Microsoft document.all)
  • meaningful values of class and id
  • meaningful alt attributes on all images

Furthermore:

  • scripts that work on links should extend the basic link functionality (think accessible popups)
  • if a link makes no sense without a script, it shouldn't be in the HTML (but be generated by JavaScript)
  • use of forms or scripts as the only means of getting certain information is prohibited
  • removing the focus rectangle on links is prohibited
  • information offered in a closed format (think Word) should also be offered in an open format
  • the semantics of many HTML elements are explicitly defined
Posted: Jan 18 2007, 03:53 PM by Plip | with no comments
Filed under:

Comments

No Comments