Hey everyone. Josh here with Online ADA. In this video, we’re covering 4.1.1–Parsing. This is a level A requirement and I’ll jump into the description.
“In content implemented using markup languages, elements have complete start and end tags, elements are nested according to their specifications, elements do not contain duplicate attributes, and any IDs are unique, except for the specific–uh, specifications allow these features. Note one: start and end tags that are missing a critical character in their formations, such as a closing angle bracket or a ‘mismatched attribute value,’ are not complete.”
This article is basically saying you need to know your basic fundamental HTML. This is probably more in line for developers who are building these accessibility tools, not so much for site owners who are delegating that information or that responsibility to someone else. But it’s important to understand the HTML.
The HTML is the foundation of accessibility for digital websites. You have assistive technology of all kinds–hardware, software. You know, synthetic speech, voice overs. You’ve got Braille machines that are gonna interpret the content on the page and give the user relevant input or feedback on their device. All these things require that the HTML is marked up properly because if it’s not, then the assistive technology has no idea what’s really going on. The website is, in effect, broken.
Having multiple IDs means that the previous IDs are probably missed or ignored because only the last ID is gonna be used. Another example–you cannot have interactive elements within a button or a role button element, so you can’t have a button inside of a button. It’s stuff like that. This article is saying make sure that your HTML is clean and good and functioning. That will be giving anyone using assistive technology the best chance that they have to use your site effectively, okay?
That’s all there is for this article. Make sure you know your HTML or make sure you’re hiring someone who does and you’ll be golden for this one. Thank you so much for joining me and I’ll see you in the next one.