- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 23:30:59 -0400 (EDT)
- To: Thanasis Kinias <tkinias@optimalco.com>
- cc: "_W3C-WAI Web Content Access. Guidelines List" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Yes, some people are not sure how literal they are being, and some others know, but don't think it is worth noting. Humour is probably a bad example though - it is very often intrinsically inaccessible, and even more often not everyone sees the funny side. Designating writing styles or audience is a useful thing to do, but even so there are things that can be done to go beyond this, and providing alternatives for non-literal text seems to me to be a valuable one to explore. Charles On Fri, 29 Jun 2001, Thanasis Kinias wrote: [snip] Most English is very idiomatic, in ways that native speakers really do not comprehend most of the time, especially those with low literacy levels. In fact, most people, it seems, would write "put up with" instead of "tolerate," [snip] Also, in some writing, a certain intentional vagueness of meaning is part of the communication -- humour is frequently based on such things. And one can't really mark up humour. Some means of designating mode of writing (e.g., Brussels bureaucratic English versus Douglas Adams [R.I.P.] versus American creative-writing textbook) might be useful, but that really falls under the markup folks' purview. [snip]
Received on Sunday, 1 July 2001 23:31:00 UTC