Re: User Contexts: identifying assistive technologies

edits inline
> I'm on record as expressing doubts about whether User Contexts should allow
> active assistive technologies to be disclosed, primarily for the reason that
> this could harm interoperability and standards-conformance by encouraging Web
> application authors to write to the implementation rather than to the
> specifications and to introduce AT-specific hacks that work around bugs. This
> practice reduces the incentive for AT developers to fix bugs or to achieve
> greater interoperability, and thus could be bad in the long run even if it
> assists users in the short term.

Well yes, I agree!

>
> Nevertheless, if we are going to disclose assistive technologies, as was
> pointed out to me off-list in response to my requirements-gathering proposal,
> the current requirements and spec are inadequate: they cover only screen
> readers and allow only one name and version to be retrieved, whereas there
> could be several independent assistive technologies (screen reader, screen
> magnifier, etc.) active on a user's system simultaneously.

I think we should *worry* about the privacy implications of this and 
give serious consideration as to if/what/how.
Doing assistive technology in a detailed way may fossilize the spec in 
the context of very rapidly changing tech.  Surely we need some 
flexibility to evolve at the device level - to allow that there should 
be a degree of abstraction in the data model but that's different to a 
lack of specificity.  How would we "encourage" interoperability and 
development of a vocabulary instead of a "put what you like" string - 
and once we did get into "right what vocabulary should we use here 
instead of the string" we would be back into the problem of not being 
able to do it all and realise the *only* way to do this is with open 
strings - and that way will never achieve interoperability.  Catch 22. 
This idea was tried in the Metadata world (e.g. in IEEE 1484.12.1 – 2002 
Standard for Learning Object Metadata) and it didn't succeed.

By the way, I want to thank you for all this amazing work you have done 
on this.  I know I've disagreed with a couple of things and put a 
counter case but that's different.

Thankyou.

andy
>
> Proposal
>
> dictionary assistiveTechnology {
>    DOMString name;
>    DOMString? version;
> };
> then return a sequence or array of the above.
>
>
>




andy
andyheath@axelrod.plus.com
-- 
__________________
Andy Heath
http://axelafa.com

Received on Tuesday, 4 June 2013 10:23:31 UTC