FW: [techs] proposal to replace use of "rules"

FYI.  The enclosed mail outlines WAI's concerns with the term 'rule'
applied to the directive part of a technique, and proposes an
alternative that seems to have been accepted.

RI

============
Richard Ishida
W3C

tel: +44 1753 480 292
http://www.w3.org/International/
http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/



-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Wendy A Chisholm
Sent: 28 January 2003 18:02
To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: [techs] proposal to replace use of "rules"



Hello,

A while ago (january 2002?), when we began making the techniques
documents 
more testable we used the phrase "rules" for the testable statements.
For 
a reminder of what this looks like, refer to the HTML Techniques [1]. We

didn't want to use "checkpoint" or "criterion" since we wanted to 
distinguish the technology-specifics from the general guidelines and 
checkpoints.

However, there are many acknowledged issues with the term "rule."  e.g.,
it 
could be confused with the 508 rules, it may be interpreted as being too

prescriptive. etc.  Thus, to continue the discussion about what term to
use 
instead, here is a proposal.  First, at the top level we currently have:
Guidelines which are made up of checkpoints Checkpoints which are made
up of success criteria success criteria

I propose that at the technology-specific level we have:
(one or many) techniques that show how to meet a top-level success
criterion a technique is a combination of:
- the technique (e.g., "Use the meta element to...")
- examples
- descriptions
- etc. (all the other stuff from the schema and techniques requirements)

for those of you interested in the schema, i think we can continue to
use 
the element "rule" but when we generate documents from the xml we do 
something along the following:

====
TITLE: the document title

Techniques:
Use the TITLE element to describe the document.
====

Basically, replace "Rules" with "Techniques."

--wendy

[1] http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/wcagtech020320.html

-- 
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
http://www.w3.org/WAI/
/--

Received on Tuesday, 11 February 2003 09:27:45 UTC