Re: Please review Note on SMIL accessibility features

Thanks for helpful comments Harvey!

Here are my replies.

Marja

At 12:41 PM 8/6/99 -0400, Harvey Bingham wrote:
>At 1999-07-27 03:51 PM, you wrote:
>>WAI EOWG:
>>
>>Please review the draft technical reference Note on SMIL accessibility
>>features <http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/NOTE-smil-access-19990726>. It is also
>>under review by the SYMM WG. Please send comments back to this list
>><w3c-wai-eo@w3.org>, keeping the same cc's as this message, before the EOWG
>>meeting this Friday July 30, if possible. 
>>
>>EOWG looked at an earlier version of this months ago; it's changed a lot
>>since then and we would like to publish this a.s.a.p., so this is just a
>>check to ensure no serious problems.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>Judy
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>----------
>>Judy Brewer    jbrewer@w3.org    +1.617.258.9741    http://www.w3.org/WAI
>>Director, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) International Program Office
>>World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
>>MIT/LCS Room NE43-355, 545 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA,  02139,  USA
>>
>
>General comment:
>
>Examples: I believe they should universally include the attribute title="..."
>as is strongly encouraged (but not required) in the SMIL spec.

I agree in principle. At times it is difficult to know how the description
would be used in the UI e.g. with switch or par which are not objects
visible to users. So if someone has some scenarios of that it would help
when trying to write the titles.

>"This attribute offers advisory information about the element for which it is
>set. Values of the title attribute may be rendered by user agents in a
variety
>of ways. For instance, visual browsers frequently display the title as a
"tool
>tip" (a short message that appears when the pointing device pauses over an
>object).
>
>'title  
>It is strongly recommended that all "region" elements have a "title"
attribute
>with a meaningful description. Authoring tools should ensure that no element
>can be introduced into a SMIL document without this attribute.' 
>
>Also for region, root-layout, switch, par, seq, the media objects:
>ref, audio, video, text, textstream, animation; and the link elements a and
>anchor.
>
>It is strongly recommended that all "par" elements have a "title" attribute
>with a meaningful description. Authoring tools should ensure that no element
>can be introduced into a SMIL document without this attribute. 
>
>It is strongly recommended that all "seq" elements have a "title" attribute
>with a meaningful description. Authoring tools should ensure that no element
>can be introduced into a SMIL document without this attribute. 
>
>----
>Correction notations:   _..._ addition    X...X deletion
>
>1. Intro Para 6 
>Part of the responsibility ... describe relationships XbetweenX _among_ 
>tracks, ...

OK.

>2.2 Last para: Below we discuss in more detail how to associate captions and
>auditory descriptions with multimedia presentations in SMIL 1.0 in a manner
>that allows XusersX _a user_ to control the presentation of the alternative
>stream. 

I prefer users.

>2.2.1 Captions   
>
>Example 1 
>
>Some browsers may recognize the short endtag of XML only if preceded by
space.
>I'd change all such to include that space.
>
>  <video   src="video.rm" _ /_>

OK, if necessary.

>Both examples:
>have file suffixes   rm and rtx 
>Unfamiliar to me, unlikely that ".rm" is appropriate for both audio and
video.
>
.rm real audio plugin
.rtx rich text

Most extensions come directly from SMIL examples but I'm not sure about
this one. The video could be changed to .mpg (Mpeg).

>2.2.3 Multilingual presentations and stream equivalents
>
>In the following example, the TV news are offered in both Spanish and
English.
>If the user has the player configured to support both Spanish and
overdubs, the
>Spanish audio track will be rendered. Otherwise the second audio track of the
>first switch element (the English audio track) will be rendered. Note that
>since there is only one set of captions (in English), they will be rendered
>when the user has configured the player to support captions. _This presumes
>that English is the default lang, and that is the language of the caption._
>

The default lang refers too much to user configured default lang which
could be Spanish as well. Here author only offers captions in one language
english independently of the user configured default lang.

>4.0 Navigation and Linking Para 1
>
>SMIL 1.0 includes a number of interesting linking features, including
HTML-like
>hyperlinks and image maps (as well as video maps). SMIL 1.0 also allows
authors
>to create time-dependent links that may 
>    Xonly X 
>be active only at certain times during a presentation (as defined by the
>author). To make these hyperlinks accessible, authors must provide textual
>information and SMIL players should allow users to control the link
rendering.

OK.

>4.3 Useful Navigation Mechanisms
>
>Example 2  refers to img three places. Add alt="..." to them.
>Add spaces before " />"  Fix the one that omitted the "/".

OK.

>6. To Learn More about Accessibility and SMIL
>
>Para 2. SMIL presumes CSS2; CSS alone is not enough.

I thought CSS is more general i.e. CSS1 or CSS2. If not, it can be changed.

>Regards/Harvey Bingham
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Received on Friday, 6 August 1999 17:55:55 UTC