RE: [320] Ability to be expressed in words

The excerpt from the National Braille Association Tape Recording Manual at 
[1] gives advice on writing descriptions of  illustrations, diagrams, maps, 
tables, charts, and graphs.  It includes several examples of images and 
their descriptions.

To provide authors the first step to get over the hump, in the excerpt the 
first step in writing a description of a figure is:
Ask yourself, "Why is it there? What does it illustrate or add to the 
text?" Stress these points and avoid inconsequential details.

The excerpt begins with general guidance and becomes more specific to the 
different types of visual information.

[1] http://www.w3.org/2000/08/nba-manual/Overview.html

At 03:59 PM 8/24/2003, Al Gilman wrote:

>At 02:11 AM 2003-08-23, Tom Croucher wrote:
>>I know this does not answer the question Kynn effectively posed of "What
>>other alternatives can you give?" but maybe it posses a more poignant
>>one, "What alternatives at all can we persuade content providers to
>>give?"
>
>It is true here, as Joe says, that we don't just need a better definition,
>we need a better idea.  "Just do what is possible to express verbally" is an
>unending assignment.  There has to be some other principle we can
>bring to bear.  And there is.
>
>The right goal for our effort, as Tom has suggested, is "what tip of the
>information iceberg is most important to get articulated verbally, and
>how can we get authors over the hump to articulate that?"
>
>If we can communicate the right questions to the authors, they will be able
>to articulate the answers.  Framing the questions is the key.  And then
>follow-through.  Because gaps in the access infrastructure that the author
>intended won't be obvious without aided inspection of the page.
>
>The good news is that the theory for what to do is nearly there in the rest
>of what we are already saying.  Summarize, decompose, orient, navigate.
>Moreover, some practices to promote are already out there on the web in what
>content providers are already doing.  We just need to refine our story to
>get more content posted using more of the good practices.
>
>The piece of this job that looks doable in the near term is to coach the
>author through a bit of scene modeling and get them to articulate what is in
>their scene, some principal properties of each such thing, and principal
>relationships among these things.  Then we will be getting somewhere.
>
>This will create a guide to their scene in an entity/relationship/attribute
>graph with navigable relationships and speakable attributes.  It's up to the
>format to create the marriage by which this gloss infiltrates or decorates
>the scene the author has constructed by which to tell their story.  Once we
>understand how to combine more- and less- critical information in the
>computer representation, the whole plan is scalable to provide more or less
>drill-down depth as the topic and the content developer's skills allow.
>
>[The URCC primitives: "What's there?"  "What can I do?" are still the core
>of what we have to lure out of authors.  Imagine yourself answering these
>questions over the phone...]
>
>Furthermore, there is a body of practice to pick up and extend, already out
>there on the web, that will take away the worst of the problem and if
>systematically applied across the web, leave a more universally usable state
>of practice than what we have now.  This is how GIS information is served on
>quote map sites unquote.
>
>A GIS-like information base is usable enough in diverse enough modes of
>access as to be considered a 'universal design' level of information
>architecture.  I claim that "universally accessible GIS is readily
>achievable," and "GIS-like" is a good working notion for a class of
>information structures that the authors should be led to create (at least
>for now).  Accessing these information structures takes the right sorts of
>access methods, but these are systematically implementable in libraries and
>pragmas and don't have to be re-invented graphic by graphic.
>
>Web content developers can be led to an 'aha' experience saying "this is
>more doable than it first looked" by reviewing how the information that is
>conventionally considered "map information" is also served [on the
>competitive map sites] through verbal dialogs as well.  As Tom reminds us,
>this is critical to our success; perfect guidelines that fail in the EO
>process are not doing any PWDs any good.
>
>Talking about creating a GIS-like infiltration of the scene presented on the
>web screen helps the content designer/developer think in graph terms and not
>be forced to take the harder conceptual leap to a linear narrative.
>Anything we do to lower the potential barrier to getting over the belief
>that it's too hard is golden, is critical to our success.  Presented with a
>tree-view presentation of the objects they have identified in their scene,
>an author can readily from this view create a sensible tour, a linear
>reading order.  Separating the questions of contents from order will make
>the job more doable by real people in the content development activity.
>
>Appropriate use of hierarchy in the scene description eases the dependency
>on linear order.  This is especially important in the Tufte domain where the
>information graphs are not gracefully projectable into a sequence.  Users
>can, after all, follow non-linear graphs of navigable relations so long as
>they are marked well enough with labels that evoke axes of relationship
>that stick in the user's head.  The easiest way to do this of course is to
>evoke patterns of relationship that are common in the users' life experience.
>But there are lots of multidimensional tuples of axes that are common enough
>experience so we don't have to wrestle every data space into an essay outline.
>
>Al
>
>For more, including links to resources, see
>
>  Re: could you share your visualization links?
>   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-wai-rd/2003Jul/0002.html
>
>Plus:
>
>What is it that you want the user to feel as well as know?
>Put the analysis in
>  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-tech-comments/2001Aug/0001.html
>together with the historical snapshot of the cited page available as
> 
>http://web.archive.org/web/20010801160837/http://www.bankofamerica.com/accessiblebanking/
>
>
>>On Thursday, August 21, 2003, at 10:55 AM, Joe Clark wrote:
>> >> WAI and WCAG WG peck away at picayune peripheral issues, tending to
>>get
>> >> even those wrong, and never quite twig to the fact that their central
>> >> themes are even more wrong.
>>
>>
>>On Friday, August 22, 2003, at 17:47, Kynn Bartlett wrote:
>> > "The current concept meets needs.  A replacement
>> > must either meet those same needs, or somehow prove that those needs
>> > don't really exist after all."
>>
>>
>>As the newcomer to the WG I think I have some level of objectivity to
>>whatever issues exist between Joe and the list.
>>
>>My take on what Joe is saying is this:
>>
>>If we try and force people to provide an alternative, which is
>>"expressed in words", to complex non-text content we run the risk of
>>alienating content providers from other more attainable goals which are
>>perhaps more immediately useful.
>>
>>Being a fan of Tufte myself, and having some background in Information
>>Architecture, I sympathise with the problems associated with displaying
>>complex information (and often raw data) in a meaningful, or at least
>>digestible, form. I would suggest that in their enthusiasm to provide
>>the best possible accessibility standards the working group may be
>>setting goals which are uneconomic or simply too difficult for content
>>providers.
>>
>>As a web developer who advocates (as we all do) standards compliance it
>>is plain that getting people to follow such standards as XHTML is
>>difficult enough. If we then compare XHTML to WCAG; content providers
>>are upset (not through any fault of ours) because accessibility, being a
>>subset of usability, is not something one can just automate, it requires
>>thought and human appraisals. As such it seems critical to the success
>>of the WCAG, and hence the WAI, that the recommendations we purpose are
>>achievable goals. Perhaps more importantly they should be perceived by
>>content providers as achievable goals.
>>
>>I do openly admit that there are two levels of compliance in the current
>>WCAG 2.0 draft, and I am keen for us to explore all options before we
>>discount them. However if most content providers feel threatened by a
>>recommendation that appears restrictive and is not open and shut (as
>>XHTML is), overly zealous rules will only serve to further the view that
>>standards of accessibility are unachievable.
>>
>>I know this does not answer the question Kynn effectively posed of "What
>>other alternatives can you give?" but maybe it posses a more poignant
>>one, "What alternatives at all can we persuade content providers to
>>give?"
>>
>>
>>Tom Croucher
>>
>>Co-founder Netalley Networks
>>(http://www.netalleynetworks.com),
>>BSc(Hons) Computing Student / Information Services Staff University of
>>Sunderland
>>(http://www.sunderland.ac.uk),
>>Accessibility Co-ordinator Plone CMS
>>(http://www.plone.org)

-- 
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
http://www.w3.org/WAI/
/--

Received on Thursday, 28 August 2003 16:01:19 UTC