HTML data for the masses: DOCTYPE usage

April 11, 2012Development

Of a sample of approximately 8900 home pages from a list of of the top 10,000 sites the following HTML doctype usage was found:

Total pages with a doctype declaration: 7708

  • XHTML 1.0: 4930 – 55%
  • HTML5: 1539 -17%
  • HTML 4.01: 960 – 11%
  • XHTML 1.1: 111 – 1.3%
  • HTML 4.0: 96 – 1%
  • XHTML+RDFa: 24 -0.3%
  • HTML 3.2: 9 – 0.1%
  • html SYSTEM: 9 – 0.1%
  • XHTML Mobile: 4
  • html 2.0: 1
  • other: 34 – 0.4%

doctype data text file (zip 5k)

DOCTYPE’s and Accessibility

To my knowledge the use of any particular DOCTYPE has absolutely no effect upon the accessibility of the associated HTML code. What is important is that the doctype you use does not trigger browser quirks mode. The simplest doctype to use to ensure that quirks mode is not triggered is the HTML5 doctype:

<!DOCTYPE html>

For data set and other details refer to: HTML5 Accessibility Chops: data for the masses

 

 

 

 

Categories: Development

About Steve Faulkner

Steve was the Chief Accessibility Officer at TPGi before he left in October 2023. He joined TPGi in 2006 and was previously a Senior Web Accessibility Consultant at vision australia. Steve is a member of several groups, including the W3C Web Platforms Working Group and the W3C ARIA Working Group. He is an editor of several specifications at the W3C including ARIA in HTML and HTML Accessibility API Mappings 1.0. He also develops and maintains HTML5accessibility and the JAWS bug tracker/standards support.