RE: What does "for example" mean

I agree with william that the main thing is to make sure people understand 
there are choices and explain the choices.

  I suggest we change the wording from

quote
For example, in HTML, use the "summary" attribute of the TABLE element.
unquote

to something like

quote
For example, in HTML, one way is to use "summary" attribute of the TABLE 
element.
unquote

Or any other wording that makes it explicit that "summary" is not required.

Also, as part of this erratum, I think we should say that things following 
"for example" are always required unless the guidelines explicitly say 
otherwise.  I think that covers most or all of the uses of "for 
example".  We then put in a few words where we didn't want it to always 
required.

It this leads to arguments about whether things are required or not, well, 
that has to be settled for WCAG 2.0 anyway, so that work isn't wasted.

I think we have to be really clear here.  Adherence to WCAG is being 
written into actual contracts, so we should remove ambiguity as much as we 
can, even if it's clear to us what we mean.

Len


At 07:49 AM 3/6/01 -0800, William Loughborough wrote:
>At 09:21 AM 3/6/01 -0500, Bailey, Bruce wrote:
>>Documents like the WCAG _are_ going to be taken literally, and if this is 
>>not the intent, then the authors should write more carefully
>
>Apparently "literally" and "carefully" are, as Al tried to point out, a 
>bit more complex than they seem.
>
>What stuff "means" is often in the mind of the reader a quite different 
>matter than it was for the author. Does "all men are created equal" 
>deliberately exclude women? Are people with otherly-colored skin "men"?, etc.
>
>No matter how careful we are there will be different readings of our 
>product, but if we can avoid being too testy with one another we will find 
>a way to make future clarifications more likely.
>
>Whatever "erratum" we issue re WCAG 1.0's treatment of SUMMARY won't 
>matter much if we make clear that summarizing is encouraged (in the 
>checkpoints) and how to do it includes (in the techniques) some hierarchy 
>among TITLE, CAPTION, NAME, SUMMARY, ALT, LONGDESC - in other words "get 
>appropriate", whatever that means in a particular instance.
>--
>Love.
>                 ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE
>

--
Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
Institute on Disabilities/UAP and Dept. of Electrical Engineering at Temple 
University
(215) 204-2247 (voice)                 (800) 750-7428 (TTY)
http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday         mailto:kasday@acm.org

Chair, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Evaluation and Repair Tools Group
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/

The WAVE web page accessibility evaluation assistant: 
http://www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/piat/wave/

Received on Thursday, 8 March 2001 11:05:14 UTC