RE: 2.1.1 -- is it a "checkable" checkpoint?

At 02:13 PM 6/23/1999 , Dick Brown wrote:
>Kynn suggested changing checkpoint 2.1.1 to:
>[Priority 1]
>Use standard accessibility user interface guidelines as for
>any other piece of software.
>Not a bad idea, but how do we define "standard" guidelines?

I don't know if we can.  Not a definitive, absolute, normative
definition without a great deal of work and without making
our document a lot less generally applicable.

Is it necessary to define "standard", though?  Is it necessary
for us to have strict definitions for every single word in the
guidelines?

I haven't been participating much in the recent month or so,
and a lot of that has to do with the fact that I feel we're not
making much progress beyond semantic arguments; I have a feeling
(which may or may not be justified) that we've stopped with the
exchange of productive ideas and new thoughts and are now working
on just cleaning up the language and getting caught in
semantic circles.

And that's not particularly interesting to me; I feel like we
spend a lot of time on the minutae, and devoting a lot of
energy to specific sticking points that may or may not matter
to anyone beyond the people who bring it up, and they may just
be bringing it up for the sake of contributing and feeling
involved.  (In other words, someone reading this without the
compulsion to get involved with changing the words may not be
bothered by something, but because we're on the "team", we
are working hard on these little details.)

I'm not trying to sound critical of any specific person (certainly
not Dick) or of the entire group, but I'm just feeling a sense
of running around in circles and little sense of actual
progress toward the goal.  Is it because we've already reached
the goal and we're just cleaning up the little details before
crossing the finish line, or is it because we've lost our way
and are seeing the little picture instead of the big one?

Apart from the specifics of where we put the "scope" and other
terms, and apart from whether or not we split checkpoint
X.Y.Z into 2 or 3 parts, do we have all the information we
need in here?  Have we got every single thing necessary, that
we know of, in order for someone to make the kind of tool we
would like them to make?  What happens when we take a step
back and have a broader look?

I may just be venting steam because the pepsi my wife brought
back for lunch gave me a headache (I usually prefer non-
caffeine drinks for lunch), but I've had this uncomfortable
sense of "lost in semantics" for a while now.  Tell me if I'm
off base or not?

--
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                   http://www.kynn.com/
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet      http://www.idyllmtn.com/
Catch the Web Accessibility Meme!                   http://aware.hwg.org/
Next Online Course starts August 2         http://www.kynn.com/+nextclass

Received on Wednesday, 23 June 1999 17:25:14 UTC