tridion rich text area wcag validation

Question

Apologies if this is a fairly simple question. I have a rich text area field set to XHTML transitional and WCAG priority 2. I see that certain validation/cleanup happens automatically when switching between tabs on the rich text field or when the component is saved. However, if the "Validate" button is clicked after succesfully saving then Tridion warns of validation errors that haven't been auto-corrected/flagged on save e.g. a missing alt tag on an image. Is it possible to instruct Tridion to enforce the full validation that happens when the "Validate" button is clicked so that a component cannot be saved whilst errors remain?

Thanks

Phil

Answer 1

You need to be aware that there is three types of validations happening on RTF's:

The Document Type validation (Strict/Transitional) happens when a content author:

• saves a Component
• Presses the Validate button
• Changes tabs in the format area

The W3C Accessibility Level validation occurs only when:

• The content author presses the Validate button.

You can also define a Filtering XSLT, that will be applied to the content whenever a user:

• saves a Component
• presses the Validate button
• changes tabs in the format area

If you want to perform the validate action before saving, I think your best bet is to go through the GUI Extension road, and trigger the Validation functionality when the save button is pressed. But by default, there is no way to do this.