I’m sure you’ve seen one of these icons before. These are used to indicate that a certain page uses W3C valid code. There exist smaller or text-only versions. I often click such icons when I come across one, just to find out it’s actually incorrect. I can’t remember ever seeing a W3 valid website using this icon.

Many people fail to answer the simple question of “why W3 valid XHTML?”. Or even better, “why XHTML over HTML?”. Bragging rights, mostly. Of course, no-one takes you seriously with a HTML 4 transitional code, that doesn’t even validate.

Why validation in the first place? Web browsers throughout history have never complained about errors in HTML structure. Rather than that they have tried to fix the errors. This made developers lazy and they didn’t care wether their code was really an actual html code. All programming languages complain about syntax errors and so don’t work when “invalid”. But making browsers work this way would break 90% (if not more) of the internet. A big no no there. So W3 took a different approach - Let’s promote the idea of validity among developers. And this is good. It has gone somewhere in the recent years. The problem, though, is that most people don’t realize why this is so important. Browsers draw my page correctly anyway. Yes they do, but have you tried all of them? Are you sure future browser will handle errors the same way they to nowadays? Do screen readers know how to handle errors? How about Google?

Ok, so we know why valid (X)HTML is good, and we have created a valid page. But do our users care? The only thing they care about is wether the page renders correctly or not for them. They don’t care if it renders correctly for everyone else. We should be caring about that.

One thing that I really find funny is how people try to bypass the validation errors. For example, target attribute is not supported in strict doctypes, therefore a link cannot open in a new window using valid strict (X)HTML. What people do, is they add a target attribute to links using javascript. This way they have made an invalid html code, that looks valid to the validator. This shows how validation itself is irrelevant to people, as long as they can stick a “W3 valid” badge to the page. The effect for regular (non-validator) usage is the same though.

So yeah, I’m all for the “validation passed” badges, they do raise people’s awareness, I guess. But using them on pages that are invalid, to me, is like saying you’re a badger, when you’re actually not.

Now with all the badges… Why don’t I ever see any WAI icons?