Re: ATAG 2.0 comments

Hi all,

First, thanks to Anna for her time on this.

Here are some thoughts on the comments:

Anna.Zhuang@nokia.com wrote:
> Dear ATAG WG,
>  
> I have a few comments to the ATAG working draft.
>  
> In the Introduction section, second paragraph after the first two 
> bullets: "As ATAG 2.0 guides authors in complying to WCAG 2.0, similar 
> to the constraints of WCAG 2.0, even content that conforms at the 
> highest level (AAA) will not be accessible to individuals with all 
> types, degrees, or combinations of disability …" --- "will not be 
> accessible" is a very strong statement provided that  "individuals with 
> all types, degrees, or combinations of disability" is something hard to 
> be precisely measured. I suggest you say "may not be fully accessible" 
> or something along these lines.

JR: Agreed.


> Introduction, definition of authoring tool, Notes on Definition, point 
> 2: "if the tool archives as Web content". --- What does that mean? The 
> tool itself is archives as web content? Can you make it more clear in 
> the text.

JR: Perhaps: "(e.g., a collaborative tool that archives the conversation 
as Web content)."

  > Organization of the ATAG 2.0 document, Part A, point 4:  "Authors 
with a
> wide range of abilities must be able to understand the user interface 
> functions and components that they can perceive and operate. " --- wide 
> range of abilities normally means a smart and capable person. The 
> document however addresses humaan disabilities and limitations. So it is 
> better to say at least "a varying range of abilities" or something along 
> these lines.

JR: Agreed.


> Organization of the ATAG 2.0 document, Part B, point 2: "Actions may be 
> taken at the author's initiative that may result in _accessibility 
> problems_ <l>."  --- There are two sides of the story. Author might 
> conciously select a "technique" that is inherently not accessible and on 
> the other hand author may do so because he lacks accessibility 
> knowledge. The document should address both cases.

JR: Agreed. I think it does.


> Organization of the ATAG 2.0 document, Part B, point 3:  "Authoring 
> tools should encourage the author's awareness and discovery of tools, 
> features, …" --- Tool should encourage discuvery of tools??? Please 
> elaborate on this or simply remove the second instance of tools from the 
> sentence.

JR: Perhaps it can be further simplified: "Authoring tools should 
facilitate awareness and proper use of features that support accessible 
authoring practices, with a goal of incorporating accessibility into 
common practice."


> Organization of the ATAG 2.0 document, Success Criteria --- the first 
> paragraph does not explain how ATAG 1.0 c hecpoints corespond to ATAG 
> 2.0 success criteria. Should they relate at all? Or should ATAG 2.0 
> reader forget ATAG 1.0 doc alltogether? Think of tool developers who 
> already have experience in implementing ATAG 1.0 and want to update the 
> tool to ATAG 2.0. 

JR: Maybe "They are similar to the "checkpoints" in ATAG 1.0." should be 
expanded and turned into a note at the bottom of the section.

Notes:
- Any success criteria that are judged not applicable to a particular 
authoring tool are treated as satisfied for conformance purposes, as 
long as a rationale is provided.
- What are called "success criteria" in ATAG 2.0 correspond with what 
were referred to as "checkpoints" in ATAG 1.0.


> I also don't feel the bridge between ATAG 2.0 and WCAG 
> 2.0 is very well built.

JR: OK, I'll try to take another crack at this in another email.


> Levels of conformance --- you end up having lots of redundant text and 
> also partial conformance is not well explained. How about you 
> restructure this section and first explain that there are different 
> types of conformance: full and partial. Then explain what is full 
> conformance, meaning both part A and part B requirements must be 
> satified, then have 3 points for level A, AA, AAA of full conformance 
> explained. Next explain what is partial conformance for Part A and have 
> 3 points there, next explain wehat is partial conformance for Part B and 
> have 3 points there. Also, WCAG 1.0 had rather handy text explaining 
> what A, AA, AAA conformance mean to the end user: impossible to use, 
> hard to user, somewhat difficult to use. For some reasons WCAG 2.0 lacks 
> this text. You may wish to explain all 6 points of partial conformance 
> in terms of the end user experience. This is important because this 
> gives tool developers a good level of human perception of what he wants 
> to achieve in the end. Dry requirements don't give such simple picture.
> It might be good to mention part A and part B purpose in the bullet list 
> just before ATAG guidelines section.

JR: We could try to clarify, the WCAG levels explanation might be helpful:
http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/conformance.html#uc-levels-head


> ATAG 2.0 guidelines, Part A, scope, end of the first sentence: Are you 
> talking about tool developer or web content developer who is tool user. 
> Be careful with the word "developer" in this document as it means two 
> different things. If it is a tool develoiper better to state it clearly 
> in the spec.

JR: Maybe we sub "tool developer" for "developer"?


> All guidelines in Part A have unnecessary text in []. Consider removing 
> [For the authoring tool UI]. You don't have such explanation in Part B 
> guidelines. This is self evident from the scope of Part A and if it is 
> not, you need to make it evident on the high level and not repeat it 
> with each guideline.

JR: We need to discuss this. It was added because people were not 
reading the intro text.


> Guideline A1.1: Please elaborate more on web based functionality.

JR: I suppose we could.

> Guideline A1.2 Please give better explanation of non web based functionality

JR: We need to use the term in the rationale.


> Both guidelines A1.1 and A1.2 refer to WCAG but not in any specific way. 
> Should it be stated more clearly that e.g. all WCAG requrements 
> applicable to a given tool UI needs to be met.

JR: A.1.2 actually doesn't refer to WCAG.

> You have a big chuynk of copy pasted text in A1.2.1-A1.2.3. can you 
> avoid redundancy?

JR: That's the "redundancy vs. confusion with relative priority" issue.


> Principle A2 and A3, you have bullet list that is also organised 
> alphabetically. Why so? Perhaps you better remove the bullets and leave 
> alphabetic ordering only.

JR: I'm not quite sure what this refers to.



Cheers,
Jan

Received on Monday, 6 April 2009 19:34:18 UTC