Re: A proposal for changing the guidelines

Hmmm. I agree with your conclusions (that we should make it clear what we
are assuming about the world that people are operating in vis-a-vis user
agent capabilities in particular) but not with the premise (that How content
is generated matters).

We actually discussed the issue of what capabilities we are assuming on the
last confernce call a little, and I hope it is on the agenda for CSUN.

cheers

Charles McCN

On Mon, 13 Mar 2000 pjenkins@us.ibm.com wrote:

  
  
  Jason wrote:
  > ...the requirements are goal-oriented rather than process-oriented:
  > they prescribe what must be available to user agents, namely
  > accessible web content, and are not concerned with how this is
  > generated, whether by server-side manipulations or otherwise.
  
  I believe that many of the checkpoints are in fact influenced by *HOW* the
  content is generated.  Many of the issues and priorities are based on the
  current and in many cases past capabilities of the client user agent and
  assistive technologies.  For example, client-side verses server-side image
  maps, client-side JavaScript verses server-side cgi, tables for layout
  verses CSS2 positioning have all been used as arguments to raise and lower
  priorities of the checkpoints and define the checkpoints themselves.  I
  understand that what happens on the server may not be a concern, except
  that the guidelines dictate to some extent that many things still need to
  be handled on the server to remain accessible.  I believe to move forward
  the working group needs to do a better job in defining the requirements.
  As an author/developer I need to know what the assumptions are in terms of
  platforms and capabilities of user agents and assistive technologies.  I
  propose we issue a W3C note with these assumptions specified, and then move
  forward from these in changing the guidelines.    The problem is that
  platforms, user agents, and assistive technologies are all at different
  levels.  We need to agree on some specified set and document them in a W3C
  note.
  
  Regards,
  Phill Jenkins
  
  

--
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053
Postal: GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001,  Australia

Received on Monday, 13 March 2000 14:30:45 UTC