[Bug 13432] Editorial changes to The Video element (1 of 5)

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=13432

--- Comment #8 from John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu> 2011-09-06 19:52:54 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #7)
> 
> (I asked John for this information by e-mail but did not get a reply.)

FWIW, I *did* reply to Ian off list on Aug 22nd, and the exchange was less than
fruitful.


"Political Correctness" and sensitivity to the various communities of people
with disabilities is not a binary checklist that can be applied generically by
the Editor to accessibility related discussions. However, I have reprinted a
White Paper (with permission) that was originally produced by the Active Living
Alliance a few years back that might be of some help: it can be found at
http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/soap/resources/whitepapers/dignity 

Specific to this bug, the strategies of users who are Blind (versus users who
may have any number of other vision related disabilities) as they interact with
multi-media content will often be different, based upon the single criteria of
having some vision versus having no vision, thus there is a distinction there
that should be acknowledged. 

The same is true for users who are profoundly deaf versus users who have other
types of hearing issues - once again the distinction generally being at the
point of total versus partial non-hearing. For those who are profoundly deaf,
there is also a socio-political distinction due to that community's use of sign
language.

The proposed Editorial change in this bug has *no bearing* on the technology.
It was provided as feedback to the Accessibility Task Force media sub-team by
subject matter experts and members of the afore-mentioned communities, and
forwarded to the W3C Editor to ensure we communicate respectfully with the
various communities we interact with. What should have been a graceful
acknowledgement of some political sensitivity by the Editor, has instead become
a back-and-forth exchange over what appears to be a need to retain full
authorship of every single line of the Specification.

Can the Editor explain to the Working Group why making this editorial change is
so controversial? Is there a significant (or even trivial) impact on the
technology being addressed in this Standard that makes this change onerous?

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Received on Tuesday, 6 September 2011 19:52:57 UTC