Web Development
Web Developer Guidelines
Visual Design Recommendations

Checkpoint 1.2 - Mobile-PDA

Site validates to XHTML Basic 1.1 [XHTML-Basic] delivered with content type application/xhtml+xml

WCAG 1.0 Priority 2

WCAG Guideline 3. Use markup and style sheets and do so properly.

The document type (DOCTYPE) tells the browser how the page needs to be rendered, including the rules for rendering the page and how strictly to follow these rules. The MIME types sent by HTTP servers provide important information to browsers on how to treat a document. Writing the page in XHTML Basic 1.1 ensures that a wide number of mobile phones will be able to understand the web page and produce the required display designed by the page author.

Requirement

The following DOCTYPE is used on each page served to a mobile device and the page validates to that device. The MIME type is specified as application/xhtml+xml.

DOCTYPE: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML Basic 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-basic/xhtml-basic11.dtd">

Recommendation

Often the web server will not have the correct MIME types defined for mobile markup standards. If not correctly set up, the page may not be rendered as the page author requires. Verify with server administration that the MIME types have been set on the server.

Checking Tool

View the source of the mobile page and validate the page using a validator located at W3C Validators  (validator.w3.org/mobile/)

Information Source

The original source of this information is located on the W3C web site  (www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-TECHS/#tech-identify-grammar)

 

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