Summary of Standards Issues « Standards 4
Legacy HTML
- Tables used for layout
- Deprecated tags and attributes
- Extensibility impeded by faulty foundations
- Endangers the long-term viability of the web as a communication medium
No separation of content from presentation
- No CSS
- Inline CSS
- Must touch every page file for maintenance (a significant resource burden)
- Device dependence (content can’t port to other media)
- In-document and inline CSS impedes search engine access
- Inefficient markup bloats pages, affecting server overhead and page load time)
Non-semantic markup
- Lack or improper use of semantic tags such as h1, h2, blockquote, p
- Negatively affects search engine results, re-purposing of content, multi-device compatibility
Markup fails accessibility checkpoints
- Lack or improper use of alt attribute on img tags
- Lack of longdesc attribute for information-carrying visuals
- Improper or incomplete markup for forms and data tables
- Lack of clear navigation mechanisms and constructs
- Inattention to colors relative to color-blindness and contrast for low vision
Markup fails validation
- CSS validation failure
- HTML validation failure
- Accessibility checkpoint failure
- Javascript errors and warnings