Re: Breaking the Techniques "Writer's Block"

At the level of "we should be generating and capturing into a maintained
collection concrete examples related to the issues we talk about" I entirely
agree with this idea.  

The "knowledge base" idea I just posted in reply to Len introduces a variation
on the type definition of what we are generating and accumulating, something a
little different from "accessibility techniques."  But it is a superset.
Rough
drafts of the eventual techniques documents can be sliced (extracted by
filtering) out of the knowledge-base heap when the set of guidelines and
checkpoints stabilizes.

And on an even more 'yes' note, I have proposed to the CG (call tomorrow) that
we handle certain SMIL work that is before us as work on the
techology-specific
techniques for accessible multimedia, i.e. that we make populating this
techniques section (in draft form) a work item with names and deadlines.

Al

At 02:34 PM 2001-01-01 -0800, Kynn Bartlett wrote:
>Hi, WCAG chairs and working group members,
>
>Maybe this is premature, but I don't think it is.
>
>I think it's time that we start looking at developing technology-
>specific techniques documents in parallel with the guidelines.
>
>We've had a number of cases arise in which very good ideas were
>brought -- such as about CSS, XHTML, etc. -- and were (rightly)
>assigned to future technology-specific techniques documents.
>
>However, without anyone charged with collecting those, they run
>the very real risk of being lost or forgotten while we move on to
>something else.  At the present, consigning something to a
>technology-specific techniques list is effectively sending it to
>/dev/null, off our collective radar.
>
>In addition, the process we're using for techniques and guidelines
>is an iterative one -- one in which we can expect to see much
>back and forth flow between guidelines and techniques as the
>attempt to apply the principles in the guidelines produce scenarios
>in the techniques which highlight new or misunderstood needs.
>There will be adjustments of the guidelines based on the techniques
>and adjustments of the techniques based on the guidelines.
>
>Therefore, I'd like to suggest that now is the time to start,
>at the very least, gathering together existing techniques and
>organizing them into rough drafts.  At the very least this will
>serve as a way of preserving these "issues" so that they do not
>get lost.
>
>I suggest we need to take the following steps:
>
>(1) Identify the specific "technologies" for technology-specific
>     techniques.  This consists of making a list, such as:
>     - HTML
>     - CSS
>     - XML
>     - XHTML
>     - SVG
>     - SMIL
>     - etc.  (This is not meant to be used as _the_ list, but rather
>     as a suggestion of what a list could look like.)
>
>(2) Identify "editors" for each technology who wish to undertake
>     the task of organizing/writing the technology-specific
>     techniques documents.
>
>(3) Create a format for techniques documents and firm up what exactly
>     we want each to consist of.  Should they be a flat list, should
>     they directly map the (current) guidelines, should there be
>     multiple options presented with possible drawbacks?  These should
>     be resolved by the working group to give the editors direction.
>
>Can we start work toward this plan?
>
>--Kynn
>-- 
>Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>
><http://www.kynn.com/>http://www.kynn.com/
>

Received on Monday, 1 January 2001 18:17:09 UTC