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Learning To Love the Code: HTML As a Tool in the Writing Classroom | Margaret Batschelet

Using CSS for Layout

The older use of font tags and layout tables caused problems for users of both screen readers and text-only browsers; these pages were largely inaccessible for visually impaired users unless their designers chose to create separate versions for browsers without visual interfaces. In contrast, the layout in CSS pages takes place on the stylesheet using variations on the position property. Thus users of screen readers or text-only browsers will hear and see only the page content.

The tradeoff involved, however, is that the new separation of structure and presentation requires a great deal of "fine-tuning" in order for a designer to attain the level of layout control that the use of tables provided. Moreover, the separation relies to some extent on tags that may not be available in older browsers; thus the version of pages available to older GUI browsers (e.g., Netscape and Explorer 4 and older) may be significantly plainer than that available to users with current browsers. Still, some designers have argued against continuing the practice of creating separate pages for older browsers since they feel that such browsers should be phased out in order to deal with the accessibility issues (for an explanation of this point of view, see Zeldman and the materials available at the web Standards Project).

Students can be asked to consider these questions: Are their pages accessible to all readers and should the be? Can their designs "degrade gracefullly" or is there an end point beyond which users will be locked out? Are there justifiable reasons for limiting a site to a particular, technologically defined audience? In many ways these are simply new web versions of the classic questions about audience that composition students have always asked. Yet in this instance, the springboard for asking them is HTML code.

Citation Format: Batschelet, Margaret. "Learning To Love the Code: HTML As a Tool in the Writing Classroom." The Writing Instructor. 2004. http://www.writinginstructor.org/files/batschelet/ (Date Accessed).
Review Process: Margaret Batschelet's hypertext was accepted for publication following blind, peer review.