Re: form orientation, navigation, and submission techniques

Hi, Gregory

Let's hope you're right about the developers.  However, why
not as a safety net, include some features in the content guidelines
which can be reasonably easily implemented in web pages in case the
developers don't come through?  If they do address the UA guidelines
in their products, the content guidelines can be brought into line with the new
browsers.

I have looked at CC/PP .  There are some interesting ideas, but their
are certain holes also in terms of identifying needs of disabled
people.  As I've been taking on some endeavors outside the disabled
world, I've been limiting myself to the issue of dynamically
generated web pages in the disabled world.

In the ecommerce world, B2C is business to customer web site and B2B
is business to business customer web sites.

Scott

PS  I did answer your last three paragraphs.  I said there are certain
technological limitations on transforming on the basis of semantic
content.  In the past I have tried to explain these technological
limitations or boundaries.  Unless someone has struggled with these
software problems in natural language processing, language transformation
or artificial intelligence, it is hard to explain the pitfalls in
developing this type of software.  Controlling the web page generation
will give much more satisfactory results and it is consistent with
the direction ecommerce is going.  If you need me to respond more,
it might be better to discuss this off-line.  However, you might instead
start doing reading in the area of language recognition/processing.
Also, the area of linguistics which focuses on extracting concepts from
language could be useful background.



> aloha, scott!
> 
> i'm not quite sure how to respond to your latest post to the GL list 
> addressed to me, but i'm going to attempt a response anyhow...  gregg, in 
> deference to your appeal to this list's subscribers to re-think and 
> carefully review their comments before they post them to the GL list, i 
> promise to re-read this at least 5 times before sending it!
> 
> scott wrote,
> 
> quote
> The assumption you're making is that there is no problem because the 
> clients will be incorporating the user agent guidelines.  First, where does 
> that leave blind people these days and in the near future?  Second, how 
> many developers of user agent technology are going to incorporate the 
> standards?  For example, what was the participation of Netscape/Mozilla in 
> the process of developing the standards?  I wonder how much Microsoft is 
> willing to actually implement in IE.
> unquote
> 
> 1. your assumption about my assumption is wrong -- i was merely pointing 
> you towards a co-dependent guidelines document in which several of the 
> problems you identified have been explicitly addressed in a 
> forwards-looking manner...   of course there will be bumps and miscues as 
> developers strive to achieve conformance to the guidelines documents, but 
> that is part-and-parcel of the developmental process, is it not?  and, 
> since developers have been collaborating on the guidelines not only with 
> representatives of a wide array of disability groups, but with assistive 
> technology vendors, i expect that achieving the goals of the User Agent and 
> Authoring Tool guidelines will be a far less painful process than making 
> quote mainstream unquote applications accessible to users with disabilities 
> has been in the past...
> 
> 2. WAI guidelines are not holy writ, nor are they treated as such...  what 
> they are is the best attempt of a numerically small -- but extremely 
> dedicated group of individuals, with widely varying backgrounds -- to 
> provide guidance to individual page authors, user agent developers, 
> assistive technology vendors, and authoring tool developers...
> 
> 3. no, i don't expect the User Agent Guidelines to change my or anyone 
> else's online experience overnight, but i do expect that enough pressure -- 
> of the economic, moral, and regulatory kind -- has been brought to bear on 
> the 4 targeted  constituencies enumerated above, that i do fully expect 
> developers to attempt to conform to both the User Agent Guidelines and the 
> Authoring Tool Guidelines sooner, rather than later...  both working groups 
> have actively sought, and received feedback from developers, and both 
> groups have been actively working _with_ developers to ascertain the 
> implementability of the checkpoints they contain...  moreover, both 
> documents have been--on the whole--positively received by their target 
> audiences, so yes, i do expect an honest effort on the part of developers 
> to conform to the User Agent and Authoring Tool Guidelines
> 
> 4. developer bashing is not only counter-productive, but -- in the case of 
> developer participation in the WAI, and the W3C as a whole -- 
> unfounded...  there has been considerable developer input into the User 
> Agent Guidelines and the Authoring Tool Guidelines -- in particular (and i 
> apologize if i leave anyone out of this list), on the behalf of IBM, by 
> Rich, Thatch, and Phil, as well as several of the IBM employees working on 
> the Mozilla project who participated in the UA face2face meeting hosted by 
> IBM in Austin in December 1999; and Microsoft, in particular in the person 
> of Dick Brown (who is also a member of this working group, as are one or 2 
> other Microsoft employees) and in the person of Tim  Lacey (especially at 
> the UA face2face hosted by Microsoft last October, and hopefully at the 
> upcoming UA face2face in april)...  in addition, a number of other 
> Microsoft employees have made concrete contributions to the UA Guidelines 
> -- including such quote top level unquote project managers as Chris Wilson 
> -- a name that should be familiar to readers of W3C recommendations!
> 
> those i have mentioned by name above have been particularly generous in 
> lending the UA WG their time and expertise...  in particular, Rich 
> Schwerdtfeger, the lead architect for IBM Special Needs Systems, has been 
> an invaluable resource for several WAI working groups -- so much so that i 
> have a feeling that Rich hasn't slept since 1997!
> 
> note that, while i singled out IBM and Microsoft to illustrate this point, 
> there are several other companies which are actively and constructively 
> engaged in the effort to create a more accessible web by developing better, 
> more configurable, and more accessible quote mainstream unquote user agents 
> and authoring tools...
> 
> 5. there has been a lot of passive participation -- by which i mean 
> monitoring of the UA list, formal and informal reviews of working drafts, 
> and periodic comments posted to the UA list -- by representatives of other 
> quote mainstream unquote browser manufacturers such as Lakespur Rocca of 
> Netscape, and Håkon Lie of Opera, as well as reps from Allaire, Lotus, and 
> Real Networks, to name a few...
> 
> 6. the User Agent Guidelines have benefited enormously from the active 
> contributions and participation of several assistive technology developers 
> -- in particular, Productivity Works, Alva Access Group, and 
> Henter-Joyce...  again, i have named names only as an illustration that 3 
> of the most influential adaptive technology manufacturers have been 
> actively participating in the guidelines writing process...  in addition, 
> the contributions of the Trace Center, NCAM, CAST, and the University of 
> Toronto's Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, to name but a few of the 
> accessibility-oriented research and development projects, have been 
> invaluable to the creation of the User Agent, Authoring Tools, Web Content, 
> and Evaluation & Repair documents, as well as the WAI in general...
> 
> 7. the current Web Content guidelines do deal with current technology -- 
> and the effort to revise and modularize the techniques document is an 
> attempt to keep the document inline, as you put it, with current technology
> 
> 8. current technology also includes: the W3C DOM, HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, 
> CSS2, XSL, XML, XSLT,  JFW 3.5, Window-Eyes 4.0, HomePage Reader, 
> PWWebSpeak, the Java Access Bridge for Windows, the Self-Voicing Kit for 
> Java, VIPInfoNet, and BrailleNet, to name but a few of the programs that 
> take advantage of the extended semantic and logical structural features of 
> W3C promulgated (and PF-reviewed) markup languages
> 
> 9. why did you casually dismiss the last 3 paragraphs of my post, in which 
> i proposed that you set up a proxy server to deliver tailored content to 
> users?  if you want to improve the online experience of blind users in the 
> most expeditious manner possible, the most efficacious means of doing so 
> would be through the provision of a proxy server, and not by drafting yet 
> another set of guidelines that may or may not be implemented...  moreover, 
> proxy served solutions would permeate through the audience you have 
> targeted far more comprehensively and quickly than attempting to convince 
> the maintainers of dynamically generated web sites to implement disability 
> profiling...  thus, i am at a loss as to why you are not willing to devote 
> any effort in this direction...
> 
> 10. have you investigated CC/PP, as ian and others have suggested?
> http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-CCPP
> 
> 11. finally, what do quote B2B unquote and quote B2C unquote mean?
> 
> gregory.

Received on Friday, 17 March 2000 22:20:42 UTC