Re: WCAG In Haiku; From William's Terse Version; Hope These Are Helpful

I think we (the working group) need a real spec. We need to know what are the
things we are asking for, and how are expecting to achieve them (where we can
- there may be things we are asking for where we acknowledge that we don't
have a solution yet) in a way that we can all discuss and provide reasoned
arguments for.

It seems that as these things go from the working group to the general public
it is important that people can find out why something got included. There
are many times when someone says "but accesskeys aren't that important for
blind people anyway" which is true, but it is ignoring the fact that they are
important for people with very limited input mechanisms available.

Clearly we need a spec that doesn't become a papyrus dinosaur - and that
means to me that we need to be clear about the functional requirements - the
end goals, and then work on the means that can be used, and which of those
means are good in meeting the overall goals.

(And I think a bit of good natured andd light hearted humour is helpful
<grin/>, as well as actually providing us with a mirror to look at ourselves
in a slightly different way and see if we are saying things robustly enough).

If that can be said in nice clean haiku, someone please do

chaals

On Wed, 22 Aug 2001, Al Gilman wrote:

  At 02:03 PM 2001-08-22 , Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
  >Yep. I actually thought this was cool as a way of making me look carefully at
  >what is there, too. (I guess you got to as well, writing them). Although I
  >suspect that a spec written in haiku would be too different for people to
  >readily approach it as a real spec.
  >

  AG:: Sure, but there is a question as to whether that's the question.

  If you can win them over [with brevity and wit] on _whether_ to do it, and
  your
  hints can show them _how_ to do it, is it really essential to frame a
  definitive statement of _what_ to do?  That's the charter; but is it our best
  option?

  Do we need a "real spec," or is that a formula for a papyrus dinosaur?

  Iss a puzzlement.

  Better put:  What do we need _more_ at the moment?  Something more real as a
  spec, or stuff that is more real as accessible web content?

  Al


  Note:  "Iss a puzzlement."  The King says this memorably in "The King and I."
  That's why the double 's.'

Received on Wednesday, 22 August 2001 14:59:02 UTC