First of all, great job on your exhaustive documentation of the issue. Also, I got all four of your emails, so while I'm replying to this one, it goes for all four. I don't want to clutter the list with four emails to every part of your paper, so I'll try to address them all here. I was using personal experience as a support and definitely not a soul support or even as the basis of my judgement or analysis of the pre element tag and it's accessibility or lack there of. I also did not say that it was ok to use this tag in the form of <html><body><pre>content</pre></body></html> for the site, as I backed up with a follow up email. I don't have the quote on me but it went something like this if you read it. I can help you get a temporary site up, while using some pre element tags, I can get a better site up in your time constraint and then also work with you on totally erasing all <pre> element tags and moving over to style sheets or something that would fit more with your needs and accessibility requirements. Note that, the above text is not a direct quote but a paraphrase of a follow up email I sent to Luke and others on the list with the same subject as we have been using for this thread. Also, I wanted to state that the w3c doesn't seem to be directly discouraging the use of this tag through any documents I have chanced to read. It seems to be discouraging certain principals and practices which you aptly compare to the pre element tag. This is wonderful, I thank you for watching out for the accessibility of a site. And as I stated before, I have no qualms about the fact that the pre element tag is the most accessible in the world; however, you keep stating that it would disrupt the accessibility to...for example *people who have difficulties understanding large blocks of text* Well, it is the designer's responsibility to not use it in this fashion. As any tag, even stylesheets or any other element can be exhaustively and ridiculously overused, so can the pre element tag. I wanted to know a specific example if you would? Maybe by looking at the page that resulted from this email thread to begin with? I would love to hear your feed back on that precise page, and since you are familiar with all the disabilities and problems that individuals with disabilities face on the internet, you would be a great judge of that exact page. However, judging a page on it's use of a tag without looking at how it should be used is not exactly fare to the developer of the page, no matter how temporary the fix may be. I will also agree with you that the pre element tag should be avoided because of the very debates it has spawned here; however, you seem to put little value in time constraints and in a specific example...while you relate everything to a perfect and ideal kind of world. You mentioned languages in your first email, the #1 of 3. I am amazed to here this. Does this mean that every single page on the internet, I can't even begin to imagine how many pages that is, needs to be in every single possible language known to man? This would exponentially grow the size of the most simple websites to litterally thousands of pages with hundreds of different combinations and permutations of languages. I wish, more than you might recognize, that the entire internet was as accessible to me as it is to any non-disabled individual; however, I also recognize some reality here. This does not mean that I am giving up or saying "oh well, it's nothing that can be done about it". I am however stating that sometimes, discretion and wise decisions are necessary. If I have a deadline, and my option is to get a site up in one hour, accessible or not accessible. And to make this accessible would supercede my hour. Then I'm sorry, I would put up the unaccessible site, even adding a note of it's unaccessibility and my sincere apologies. I would then work on, even if it were my own time, to make that site accessible. Anyways, I am afraid I must go off to an appointment right now. Thanks again for your research and have a great labor day holiday. Take care all, Sina
