If you are visiting this site on April 8-9 (instead of reading it in an RSS reader), you will notice that the presentation of the site is a bit naked. That is because it is CSS Naked Day (which for some reason takes 48 hours). This was an event started two years ago to promote web standards. For those who are not familiar with web standards, they are a way of ensuring that web pages are displayed the same in all browsers and that web sites are accessible to people with disabilities.

One of the practices encouraged by web standards is the use of (X)HTML for the content of the site and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) for the display. In the “old days” of web design, HTML did both. This made the sites hard to update and was a nightmare for people with disabilities. Making sure your (X)HTML is POSH (Plain Old Semantic HTML) allows people who have trouble seeing the screen to access the site, because there is nothing to interfere with software that scales your site to be large enough to read or programs that read the content aloud. Although users cannot override (X)HTML in a browser, it is possible to tell the page to display with a different style sheet. This is a very helpful feature for those who need assistance viewing the content.

As a Christian, I consider accessibility to be an ethical issue. It certainly falls under the umbrella command to love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18). But more to the point, it would seem to be demanded by the admonition not to put a stumbling block in front of the blind (Leviticus 19:14). When I write my code, I do my best to ensure that it does nothing to hinder a blind person who wants to read my sites.1

CSS Naked Day is a way to encourage web standards. Participants agree to turn off their CSS, so that what is seen is the structure of the site. The pages displayed on these days are nothing but (X)HTML. This is what accessibility software and search engines see. Showing the pages without CSS gives people a better understanding of the underlying structure of a web page.

For those not familiar with CSS, I encourage you to visit the CSS Zen Garden. That site presents a number of different CSS designs. Although the designs have a variety of appearances, every single one of them has the exact same XTHML coding. All that is changes is the CSS.


  1. For the record, I did not design the theme that is used on my blog. I am currently writing my own theme, however, which should premier in a month or so. The current theme would validate according to web standards if it wasn’t for the Amazon.com link to my book. For some reason, Amazon uses an older technology to deliver this content. [back]
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