- From: Mary Jo Mueller <maryjom@us.ibm.com>
- Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 13:02:50 -0500
- To: Peter Korn <peter.korn@oracle.com>
- Cc: Gregg Vanderheiden <gv@trace.wisc.edu>, Michael Pluke <Mike.Pluke@castle-consult.com>, "public-wcag2ict-tf@w3.org" <public-wcag2ict-tf@w3.org>
- Message-ID: <OFCD6AE6F6.3F2E7DB7-ON86257B81.0062B3ED-86257B81.0063231F@us.ibm.com>
What if we make a minor tweak by using 'can be used by non-web documents or
software' rather than 'are used by non-web documents or software'? Does
this solve the problem that not all documents or software will need to use
those services if they don't have any UI, or in the document case, when it
contains no software that could make use of those services?
- services provided by an operating system, user
agent, or other platform software that can be used by non-web
documents or software to expose information about the user
interface and events to assistive technologies.
Best regards,
Mary Jo Mueller
IBM Research ► Human Ability & Accessibility Center
11501 Burnet Road, Bldg. 904 Office 5D017, Austin, Texas 78758
512-286-9698 T/L 363-9698
maryjom@us.ibm.com
www.ibm.com/able and w3.ibm.com/able
IBM Accessibility on Facebook ▼ IBMAccess on Twitter ▼ IBM Accessibility on
LinkedIn
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and
become more, you are a leader.” ~ John Quincy Adams
From: Peter Korn <peter.korn@oracle.com>
To: Michael Pluke <Mike.Pluke@castle-consult.com>,
Cc: Gregg Vanderheiden <gv@trace.wisc.edu>,
"public-wcag2ict-tf@w3.org" <public-wcag2ict-tf@w3.org>
Date: 06/05/2013 12:42 PM
Subject: Re: Two variants for the redefinition of "accessibility
services of software"
Mike, Gregg,
I have some trouble by the "services ... used by ... non-Web documents", as
that confers a level of agency that I don't see present in non-software
documents.
A DAISY book doesn't use the accessibility services in the DAISY reader.
The DAISY reader extracts & displays the captions from the DAISY file.
There is no code in a DAISY file. The captions are encoded in DAISY; they
are extracted by the user agent (the DAISY player). An HTML5 player,
complete with Javascript & perhaps other code, is software.
Gregg - you write below: A user agent is already "platform software" so we
can't say "other platform software or user agents"
Where do we say this?
We define user agent as "any software that retrieves and presents documents
for users". So a user agent is software. But not all software is a
platform.
Some user agents are platforms, but not all. Notepad is a user agent (by
our definition). How is it a platform?
Peter
On 6/5/2013 10:05 AM, Michael Pluke wrote:
I think that I could live with your suggestion of:
- services provided by an operating system, user
agent, or other platform software that are used by software
or non-web documents to expose information about the user
interface and events to assistive technologies.
It doesn’t entirely avoid the issue of whether documents can actually
do things like “using” something, but I think that the meaning of the
above is definitely clear enough for me.
Best regards
Mike
From: Gregg Vanderheiden [mailto:gv@trace.wisc.edu]
Sent: 05 June 2013 17:21
To: Michael Pluke
Cc: Peter Korn; public-wcag2ict-tf@w3.org
Subject: Re: Two variants for the redefinition of "accessibility
services of software"
hmmm
I see where you are going -- and I kind of like it but I'm not sure
what the SOFTWARE is that is right after "used by"
What software is that? the user agent? then the user agent is
providing the service to itself?
I think the user agent provides the service to the non-web document.
- for example - a daisy book (epub 3 book now) uses
the accessibility services in the epub player to expose its captions
(for captioned material) etc, and uses the Operating System
accessibility services to have the book read aloud. (or actually
the ebook may use the epub reader/player for everything and the epub
reader may (or may not) make use of accessibility services in the OS
(may not - because they may decide to do it all themselves).
in any case, the ebook (a non-web document) is using the
accessibility services of the reader (a user agent)
the language for this would then be
- services provided by an operating system or
other platform software including user agents that are
used by software or non-web documents to expose
information about the user interface and events to
assistive technologies
or perhaps easier to read
- services provided by an operating system, user
agent, or other platform software that are used by
software or non-web documents to expose information
about the user interface and events to assistive
technologies
A user agent is already "platform software" so we can't say
"other platform software or user agents" . That is like saying
or other engineer or electrical engineer.
Make sense?
Gregg
--------------------------------------------------------
Gregg Vanderheiden Ph.D.
Director Trace R&D Center
Professor Industrial & Systems Engineering
and Biomedical Engineering University of Wisconsin-Madison
Technical Director - Cloud4all Project - http://Cloud4all.info
Co-Director, Raising the Floor - International -
http://Raisingthefloor.org
and the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure Project -
http://GPII.net
On Jun 5, 2013, at 12:09 PM, Michael Pluke <
Mike.Pluke@castle-consult.com> wrote:
Would the following, slightly more verbose, wording work for
everyone?
- services provided by an operating system, other
platform software, or a user agent that are used by software to
expose information about the user interface and events, of
software or non-web documents, to assistive technologies
&! nbsp;&nb sp;
It is a little cumbersome and Peter might argue that the “of software
or non-web documents” is not needed – but it does at least address
that software is the thing that uses services.
Mike
From: Peter Korn [mailto:peter.korn@oracle.com]
Sent: 05 June 2013 16:58
To: Gregg Vanderheiden
Cc: Michael Pluke; public-wcag2ict-tf@w3.org
Subject: Re: Two variants for the redefinition of "accessibility
services of software"
Gregg,
Let me try this another way:
Software contains at least logic statements - things like "if-then".
Software processes input, generates output. In contrast, markup
(like HTML, which some people call "code" but I would simply say "is
an encoding") doesn't contain such logic. It doesn't actually
process input. It isn't the thing that generates the output (it may
bethe output, but that is different).
So: if something is software - e.g. Javascript in a web application -
then it is software. It is covered by the existing text. If
something is NOT software - e.g. a static web page - then it is only
a document (with whatever markup), and so it is only the user agent
that is taking advantage of "accessibility services" or "other
software APIs".
Make sense?
Also, I disagree with your statement below. All software does in
fact make use of some form of platform services. Even software that
only calculates the Fibonacci series and prints the result or writes
it to a file. It is using some platform service to print the result,
to open/write to the file. In fact, even software that does no i/o
is using some platform service just to be loaded into memory. Many
kinds of software don't have a visual UI (daemon services for
example), and so aren't covered by WCAG2ICT and don't have any reason
to use platform accessibility services. But they all use some kind
of platform non-accessibility service.
As to "pure HTML/markup" documents that have form fields: again,
there is no logic there. The user agent does the logic. The user
agent notices the click (or <ENTER>) on the "submit" button, etc. If
you really want to push things and say that the markup contains some
logic (mapping the submit button to a particular new URL so that the
"if-then" of "if click then go to page" logic is in the markup), I'll
grant you an edge case. But again, there is so little logic there,
and the HTML isn'tactively utilizing any accessibility APIs, etc. I
find this a much cleaner distinction to make.
Note by the way, we had this same problem/discussion in TEITAC.
Peter
On 6/5/2013 8:31 AM, Gregg Vanderheiden wrote:
Hi Peter
Not ALL non-web documents do (and not ALL Software makes use
of platform services). But since SOME do , it needs to be in
the definition - No? .
If you want to put SOME in front of non-web documents and
MOST in front of software that is fine. But not necessary.
Actually don't most ALL non-web documents that have user
interface components in them expose them through user agent
services? Doesn’t all AT access the content via the user
agent ? (or can they access content on non-web documents that
are not opened in a user agent?)
Gregg
--------------------------------------------------------
Gregg Vanderheiden Ph.D.
Director Trace R&D Center
Professor Industrial & Systems Engineering
and Biomedical Engineering University of Wisconsin-Madison
Technical Director - Cloud4all Project - http://Cloud4all.info
Co-Director, Raising the Floor - International -
http://Raisingthefloor.org
and the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure Project -
http://GPII.net
On Jun 5, 2013, at 11:26 AM, Peter Korn <peter.korn@oracle.com>
wrote:
Wading in...
While I see many (though not all) user agents as being
platforms (hence Note 1 in platform software), I don't see all
(or even most) documents as utilizing "a set of software
services". Since software services are APIs, and it is
programming code that invokes APIs, documents that don't
contain programming code (e.g. a simple text document) by
definition cannot use those APIs, and so by definition don't
use software services.
Recall the WCAG2ICT definition of user agent - it is the thing
that "retrieves and presents documents". That thing clearly
parses the documents - gets whatever markup is in them, etc. -
and then utilizes the accessibility services of the platform
underneath it. Where that user agent is also a platform (Adobe
Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, a web browser running Javascript
code, a Java runtime), it also is a platform. But Notepad and
Wordpad aren't platforms. They are, however, by our
definition, user agents.
Make sense?
Given that, I would not insert the text "non-Web documents" as
Gregg is proposing.
Peter
On 6/5/2013 7:50 AM, Michael Pluke wrote:
I guess conceptually from a WCAG point of view that is
the case.
It seems that I have a persistent problem seeing how
lines of code in document (e.g. Web page, word doc) can,
in reality, do anything like “expose information”. To me
it is clear that it is the user agent that takes the web
page/document and “exposes information about the user
interface (as encoded in the page/document) to assistive
technologies.” Although conceptually the user agent may
offer its services to the document, I still struggle to
see what a document, or anything else that is not
software, can do with this offer. Surely only software
can actually do things – and that is why all documents
need a user agent to do things.
But I guess I will have to learn to live with this
conceptual myopia (if that is what it is) – as long as
everyone else is comfortable with what you have written.
Certainly your text is simple and clear.
I would still prefer to see the notes in their original
order.
Best regards
Mike
From: Gregg Vanderheiden [mailto:gv@trace.wisc.edu]
Sent: 05 June 2013 15:14
To: Michael Pluke
Cc: Peter Korn; public-wcag2ict-tf@w3.org
Subject: Re: Two variants for the redefinition of
"accessibility services of software"
On Jun 5, 2013, at 10:07 AM, Michael Pluke <
Mike.Pluke@castle-consult.com> wrote:
I’m not so certain whether this addition is needed. In my
mind it is always software that actually uses the
services that the platform provides. In the case of
non-web documents I see it as being the user agent that
uses the services to “expose information about the user
interface to assistive technologies”. So I do not see
that it is necessary to add non-web documents to the
first definition. For the second it is more complex as I
see the user agent using the services to expose
information about the user interface of both the user
agent AND the document to assistive technologies. In this
case it might be OK to stick with Peter’s original
wording or it might be necessary to craft something much
more complex.
Did you not see that USER AGENT is an example of
platform?
All browsers are platforms.
I realise that I am far less experienced at interpreting
the underlying WCAG 2.0 model of content and user agents,
so I accept that my interpretation may be wrong – but I
think that expert eyes need to look again at Peter’s
original definitions and Gregg’s amendments.
In either case I do not think that reversing the notes as
Gregg has done adds clarity to the original (it either
has no effect or, in my view, makes it marginally less
good).
In constructing the survey I will point to the place
where Peter has written the original proposals. If we can
resolve some alternative text before the survey is sent
out, then this text needs to be changed (preferably by
Peter or Gregg who are adept with editing the wiki).
Best regards
Mike
From: Gregg Vanderheiden [mailto:gv@trace.wisc.edu]
Sent: 05 June 2013 04:27
To: Peter Korn
Cc: public-wcag2ict-tf@w3.org
Subject: Re: Two variants for the redefinition of
"accessibility services of software"
very nice
only one thing I think needs to be fixed.
You discuss user agents as an example but don't have
non-web documents anywhere in either.
also
Below are the same text with NON WEB DOCUMENTS in the
correct places
Because both notes contain User agents and virtual
machines -- I think it reads better to reverse them (as
shown below) (I didn’t fix the note numbering so you can
see the switch)
Very nice
gregg
platform software
The term platform software, as used in WCAG2ICT, has the
meaning below:
platform software
collection of software components that run on an
underlying software or hardware layer, and that
provides a set of software services to applications
OR NON-WEB DOCUMENTS that allow them to be isolated
from the underlying software or hardware layer
Note 2: Sometimes platform software is also a
software application (e.g. a user agent or a
virtual machine).
Note 1: Examples of platform software include
operating systems, user agents, and virtual
machines.
accessibility services of platform software
The term accessibility services of platform software, as
used in WCAG2ICT, has the meaning below:
accessibility services of platform software
services provided by platform software that are
used by software OR NON-WEB DOCUMENTS to expose
information about the user interface to assistive
technologies
Note 1: These services are commonly provided in
the form of accessibility APIs (application
programming interfaces), and they provide two-way
communication with assistive technologies,
including exposing information about objects and
events.
Note 2: Platform software that is also an
application may simply expose the accessibility
services of the underlying platform layer, rather
expose its own set of accessibility services.
Alternately it may translate between the set it
exposes and those of the underlying platform
layer.
Gregg
--------------------------------------------------------
Gregg Vanderheiden Ph.D.
Director Trace R&D Center
Professor Industrial & Systems Engineering
and Biomedical Engineering University of
Wisconsin-Madison
Technical Director - Cloud4all Project -
http://Cloud4all.info
Co-Director, Raising the Floor - International -
http://Raisingthefloor.org
and the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure Project -
http://GPII.net
On Jun 4, 2013, at 8:46 PM, Peter Korn <
peter.korn@oracle.com> wrote:
Hi gang,
Coming out of our last meeting on 31June13, I have taken
a whack at redefining "accessibility services of
software" to make more central the concept that this is
about platform software, and not all software generally.
Please see Proposal #3 at New glossary term
"accessibility services of software and assistive
technology"
In particular, please see both Variant #3a in which I
keep our existing definition text, but simply change the
title of the term to "accessibility services of platform
software"; and then see Variant #3b in which I introduce
yet another new term: "platform software", when I then
leverage in next text for the retitled term "
accessibility services of platform software".
Fundamentally Variant #3a is the more minimal / less
invasive change, while Variant #3b makes fuller use of
the "teachable moment" that our Technical Report affords
us. Please also note the section For reference, from ISO
13066-1 at the bottom of that wiki page, from which I
draw on (but do not expressly mimic) that ISO text.
While it is somewhat tempting to lift definitions word
for word from ISO 13066-1, those definitions leverage
terms & concentps that have slightly different existing
definitions in WCAG 2.0 (e.g. AT), and I am also unclear
on whether such copying is of a copyright ISO standard is
OK in a non-ISO document such as our TR.
Below both variants on the wiki page please see "Edits to
other terms common to both Variants #3a and #3b" where I
show show how the new term "accessibility services of
platform software" would impact our two glossary terms
"programmatically set" and "programmatically determined",
as well as Principal 4 and Guideline 4.1 (the change is
the same under both variants).
I personally don't have a strong preference between
Variant #3a and Variant #3b - different things attract me
to each of them. I solicit comments / feedback on them,
ahead of a formal survey (perhaps tomorrow?) ahead of our
Friday meeting. I suggest we survey both approaches (as
well as the follow-on edits to those two terms, the
principal, and the guideline).
Peter
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Peter Korn | Accessibility Principal
Phone: +1 650 5069522
500 Oracle Parkway | Redwood City, CA 94065
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Phone: +1 650 5069522
500 Oracle Parkway | Redwood City, CA 94065
Oracle is committed to developing practices and products that
help protect the environment
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Peter Korn | Accessibility Principal
Phone: +1 650 5069522
500 Oracle Parkway | Redwood City, CA 94065
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products that help protect the environment
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Oracle
Peter Korn | Accessibility Principal
Phone: +1 650 5069522
500 Oracle Parkway | Redwood City, CA 94064
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Received on Wednesday, 5 June 2013 18:04:02 UTC