Many CSS advocates curse and tear out their hair as they see the slow slow growth in pure CSS designed sites. It has definitely picked up in the last couple of years, and the Dutch government is doing their bit.
Quirksmode has posted on the dutch accessibility law that went into effect last year:
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
classandid- meaningful
altattributes on all imagesFurthermore:
- 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
(Related: use ajax, get sued)
