HTML Coding - Section 5
The aim is to separate content from presentation and write code that adheres to available published standards. This delivers many benefits, including:
- Pages that should work on the maximum number of platforms and devices:
- ...therefore pages will work for the maximum number of the potential audience;
- Pages will be flexible enough to respond to audience needs:
- e.g. simple change of text size in user-defined style sheets;
- Pages will contain inherent structure and elements will have inherent meaning:
- making them more machine readable and more easily understood by people;
- Pages will essentially be self-documenting:
- making them easier to modify in the future;
- Pages will be easier to upgrade and easier to repurpose for emerging technologies and standards;
- Pages will be easier to find and classify:
- by both humans and machines.
In this section:
- DEV 5.1 - Include this information at the top
- DEV 5.2 - Construct proper headings
- DEV 5.3 - Define list and list items properly
- DEV 5.4 - Use lang, abbr & acronym to embed useful information
- DEV 5.5 - Use structural and semantic markup properly and validate code
- DEV 5.6 - Use relative font sizing, not absolute units
If you do not actually put pages into HTML, or are scared by code you may want to skip this section. ensure that whoever does prepare the pages implements the recommendations - they are vital for accessibility.
the majority of this is fairly straightforward. cut and paste examples are given where possible.