Web Design Layouts: "Do it with position: absolute"

I've started working on the initial web pages for the SpaceOwL Project Web Site, today. So, far, I've got got a basic layout put together, using Bluefish as a basic HTML editing tool. The site's content will need some more work, namely in the layout of the pages, before I could say it's ready to publish to the site - to use shared CSS specifiers, at the least - and I'd also like to to begin developing the Ant rules for driving the site's publication process. For the layout work, I think I'll give a try to a certain closed-source web development platform developed by the Adobe company, though for that, I'll have to reboot from Linux into Windows.

So, I wanted to take a brief note, before disembarking on that long Windows-centric process. It's a matter of the philosophy and policy of the design of the SpaceOWL Web Pages.

I haven't yet developed any formal accessibility guidelines for the project. I remember there being a criticism made - some years ago, on the web - in regards to how layout tables may effectively diminish the accessibility quotient of a web site. It may seem that the criticisms about layout tables may have become less apparent on the web, "these days". However, I don't know if that would indicate, in turn, as though layout tables were any more accessible, for special-purpose web user agents, such as screen-readers and braille "browsers". It may be more than a matter of "trendy design", then, to avoid using layout tables, in web pages.

In endeavoring to shore-up my position, as such, I thought I would look to see how a major public web site manages its page layout. In looking at the HTML source code for the Wikipedia page for the meta-syntactic variable, Foo, then furthermore in making a very brief analysis of a cascading stylesheet used at that page, it would appear that Wikipedia uses cascading stylesheets, throughout, for web page layout - rather than layout tables - possibly, in addressing a similar concern of web content accessibility.

So, considering: I think it's in the best interest of the SpaceOWL Project, as well, to make careful observation of the necessity of developing accessible web pages, and to utilize some guidelines in ensuring the accessibility of web content hosted at the SpaceOWL Project web site.

Granted, the SpaceOWL project may not be able to immediately affect the designs of third party services such as SourceForge -- whose services, this project gratefully makes use of. As soon as any accessibility concerns may appear from those third party services, however, the SpaceOWL project may endeavor to present the matter such that it may be recognized and then addressed by the service's developers, and to address it at least within the SpaceOWL project, more immediately.

As far as the web content hosted specifically at the SpaceOWL Project Web Site, this project should develop or adopt and likewise to apply some specific web content accessibility guidelines - such as the project may endeavor to "Crib" (for instance, but with clear reference) from WAI-ARIA and similar resources.

I've seen WAI-ARIA mentioned in the book, Introducing HTML5, by authors Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp - where, I notice, it's mentioned in the first chapter of the book, rather than the matter being shuffled off to an appendix in the book. So, in short, I think that I should take a closer look at the WAI-ARIA guidelines, for possible adoption by the SpaceOWL Project. Probably, I could take a look at it, sometime between now and the end of the process of booting Windows 7.

Cheers,

• Sean