Re: Final Business Benefits document suite available

Dear Andrew,

I just read it through in detail and it is really looking good.

As I can now print it w/out the Opera crash I was getting previously
(perhaps it was one of the markup clean-ups?), I've gone through it
carefully. I've come up with a few more things that I believe need
attending to before this goes out for review. All are minor things to fix;
sorry could not get these together earlier. 

Details below...

At 10:11 PM 8/16/01 +1000, Andrew Arch wrote:
>Dear EOWG
>
>The final draft of the Business Benefits (with the linearised tables) is now
>available from the usual place (or go straight to
>http://members.optushome.com.au/amja/wai/busben.html)
>
>Thanks to all those who provided comments and suggestions and editorial
>assistance.
>
>Lets see what the rest of the world thinks!
>
>Thanks,  Andrew

- the layout of the "Business Benefits of Accessible Design" title is
wrapping strangely. you may still have an align left or align right in
there, that would no longer be necessary w/out the resource suite nav bar.

- the "note" at beginning should be updated as we pull it onto the w3c/wai
site to publish it prior to the review request, e.g. not this draft but the
one to be reviewed on w3c/wai site should say 'is offered for review'
rather than 'will be offered.' i will coordinate w/ you on that

- typos: i'll list the ones here that i could find, please search main doc
for these words: demostrate, retrived, presenation, intructions; linear
tables version: benefiuts

- caps: there's something strange going on w/ caps; many of the acronyms
appear to be missing spaces in front of them, or this may in fact be the
case, e.g. search for theWCAG or usingSMIL and see if you get anything

- title of table document: should not have the same title, is confusing,
some people might think they have the main document if they are sent there

- initial cap on "Web": is standard usage for W3C however in the doc is
inconsistent, sometimes "web" 

- "final": this doc will still be considered a draft until it has gone
_through_ WAI IG review & other review, and so should not be labeled final
draft (as it currently is at end of main document) nor refered to it that
way on lists.

- u.s. vs. rest-of-the-world english: just checked w/ communications team
at w3c and we do need to bring this in line w/ w3c convention which is for
u.s. english spellings. affects colour, utilise, realise,
internationalisation, etc. Andrew I will forward you a note w/ details from
W3C's document editor.

- minor point but quote marks are used inconsistently throughout document,
which becomes distracting; almost all of them should be double quotes "..."
rather than single quotes '...'

- WCAG: can't recall if we discussed this in the working group, but the
references to WCAG should, i believe, all be references to WCAG 1.0,
especially since we are specifically referencing WCAG 1.0 checkpoints.
W3C's general rule is to reference specs by version number when such
exists, unless there is good reason not to, and I don't see good reason not
to here.

- general comment but probably not for changing at this point: the frequent
use of "you" and "your" in addressing the audience throughout the document
strikes me as awkward in a number of places, and conversely the one or two
areas where that convention is not used (for instance in the section on
"assisting access for low-bandwidth users") reads more smoothly to me. i
think the problem is some cognitive dissonance for me with the notion that
every person who reads this document is reading it with regard to their own
Web site. the audience could actually include Web developers or image
consultants, regulatory folks who are curious about the business benefits
side of things, etc.  In a few places the "you" almost seems like talking
down to people. However, to remove it would involve extensive re-writing,
and also probably make it sound dryer. Therefore, I'm just pointing this
out but am not sure whether we should change that or not. Am interested in
others' reactions on this question.

- suggested rewordings:
* first paragraph: "to assist in the preparation of a business case for
implementation of Web accessibility."
* second para: "adoption of WCAG checkpoints" (we cannot use the term
recommendations here, it is reserved for W3C Recommendations so as not to
create confusion)
* fourth para: "demographics" instead of "demographic statistics" (redundant)
* fifth para: "Since one of the underlying tenets of the WCAG is to
increase the usability of Web sites..." change to "Since implementation of
the WCAG has the effect of increasing the usability of Web sites..."
* i still believe that it is misleading to state that "the proportion of
people with disabilities in the population is up to 20 percent in many
developed countries -- a significant market that can be accessed through
conformance with WCAG" since it implies that the provisions in WCAG are
relevant to this entire demographic. they are not, and i believe that it
presents a credibility problem for w3c/wai to imply so. suggested
rewording: "The proportion of people with disabilities can range up to 20%
in some populations. A significant portion of those people with
disabilities -- in some countries as much as 8% to 10% of the overall
population -- can benefit from the accessibility in Web sites conforming to
WCAG 1.0." 
* "cell-phone browsers" suggest changing to "mobile phone browsers" ("cell"
is less used in many countries"
* "also be aware that 8% of the male population" in some countries this is
10%; it varies. Suggestion: "Also be aware that 8% - 10% of the male
population in many countries..."
* "From a strategic point of view, anything you can do to increase the
likelihood that your site will be found over your competitor's is a
positive benefit" This seems to imply that all Web sites are run by
cutthroat competitors, whereas hopefully the business benefits of
accessibility will appeal to non-profits and socially-minded corporations
alike. Can't figure out how to reword it. What about dropping it?
* under "repurpose content" suggest changing "simply let the differing Web
devices" to "...diferent Web devices."
* "The bandwidth savings are astonishing" suggest changing to "The
bandwidth savings are immense" (rather than presuming the emotional effect
on audience)
* "Style sheets vs. HTML tag-spaghetti: we need something that
internationalizes better than this... how about "Style sheets vs. in-line
markup"
* "from WAP phone to PDA's" suggest spelling both of these acronyms out.
* "with bandwidth becoming an limitation" "...a limitation"
* "The population is also ageing" "The population in some countries is also
ageing" 
* "This includes equal access to electronic information..." "This may
include..."

- questions:
* the first sub-bullet under "clear content" in low literacy levels -- the
detail in this paragraph, about the use of short sentences and lists,
doesn't this seem to go beyond what WCAG 1.0 actually says? if so, we are
breaking the thesis of this resource page.

- misc:
* there's an erroneous bulleted line in the "captioning" item under search
engine performance

- tables document:
* there are two "to be completed" sections near the end. we should have
these completed before it goes out for review...

So, all those were little details... again, the document is looking very
good. This document represents  a great amount of work and will become a
very useful resource.

- 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, 200 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA,  02139,  USA

Received on Friday, 17 August 2001 00:45:35 UTC