RE: is this the best approach?

I think this is a very good and VERY important topic.

I concur wholeheartedly that we need to get guidance into the main documents
for a technology - and not rely (just) on special docs..
G



gregg

-- ------------------------------
Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D.
Professor - Human Factors
Dept of Ind. Engr. - U of Wis.
Director - Trace R & D Center
Gv@trace.wisc.edu, http://trace.wisc.edu/
FAX 608/262-8848
For a list of our listserves send "lists" to listproc@trace.wisc.edu

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org]  On
Behalf Of Wendy A Chisholm
Sent:	Thursday, February 24, 2000 2:28 PM
To:	w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject:	is this the best approach?
Importance:	High

I'm working on my action item from last week: what should we incorporate
from the SMIL access note into a SMIL module for the techniques document.

The SMIL access note is very well written.  I compared it to the SMIL 1.0
spec.  The spec describes accessibility all over the place.  I like that
the SMIL note brings it into one place and creates a context for
accessibility.

But, what are authors really going to use?  I think they will use the
tutorials that are pointed to from the SMIL page.  The two that I looked at
do not mention accessibility.  They don't even use the word "caption" and
leave out the system-caption attribute where they mention the other system
attributes.

yikes.

The authoring tools working group is working with companies to incorporate
accessibility into existing tools.  The user agent working group is working
with companies to incorporate accessibility into existing user agents.

perhaps our job is to work with documentation developers to incorporate
accessibility into existing documentation?

look at the effort it takes, not only for us but for authors, to create our
own documentation:
1. we have to learn about, write, test and maintain the techniques in our
own documents.
2. we have to raise awareness that the documents exist.
3. authors have to learn from one source what to do, then *unlearn* many of
those things when they come to our stuff.
4. our stuff is a separate thing.  it requires an author to read more than
one document.  is that likely to happen?

The Guidelines need to exist because AU and UA point to them.  They
establish a good baseline that techniques, from a variety of sources, can
point to. It is a great work (that still needs some polishing).  But I'm
wondering if instead of putting our effort into creating all these new
techniques modules, perhaps we would get more bang for the buck if we
worked with existing documents to incorporate accessibility.

Then our techniques document would be lists of pointers to examples,
tutorials, and other documents whose authors we have worked with to include
accessibility.

thoughts?
--wendy
--
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
madison, wi usa
tel: +1 608 663 6346
/--

Received on Friday, 10 March 2000 18:11:08 UTC