RE: Proposal: Delete SC about contracted words

I do not want to argue for keeping SC1.   

But it is important to understand how the levels work.

A guideline in a lower level will often be broader than a higher level.
That does not mean the higher level item is covered by the lower level. 

  
Level 1 says some things must be done
Level 2 says more things must be done (which of course includes level 1 and
goes beyond.)
Removing the Level 1 item because even more is required in level 2 is not
appropriate logic.

Thus the analysis below is incorrect.    The Level 2 and Level 3 do not
cover the level 1 requirement and never can  -- because they arent invoked
until a more advanced (high number)  level of access.   

IF the level 1 criteria were lowered to a lower level,  then indeed it would
be redundant with another item at its own level - and would be 'covered.    

Now - having said that - we have to ask whether SC1 should be required at
level one or not.  I think this is a valid question.  But not because it is
redundant with lower levels.

Perhaps what Yvette (and others) were saying was

- I don't think we need SC1 at level 1. It just isnt important enough.
and if moved to a lower level it would be redundant - or covered  - with
what we already have a lower levels. 

I will leave this last as an open question to the group for comment.

Gregg

 -- ------------------------------ 
Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D. 
Professor - Ind. Engr. & BioMed Engr.
Director - Trace R & D Center 
University of Wisconsin-Madison 


-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of Yvette P. Hoitink
Sent: Friday, May 28, 2004 4:59 AM
To: 'WAI-GL'
Subject: Proposal: Delete SC about contracted words


Dear fellow group members,

Currently, we have guideline 3.1, level 3, SC 1:
The meaning of contracted words can be programmatically determined.

I think this is already covered by other guidelines and propose to delete
this SC. In level 2, SC 2 of the same guideline, we require:
A. The meanings and pronunciations of all words in the content can be
programmatically located.

Since contracted words are still words, this SC requires their meaning can
be programatically located, though there may be multiple meanings for that
word. 

In level 3, SC 2, of the same guideline, we require:
B. Where a word has multiple meanings and the intended meaning is not the
first in the associated dictionary(s), then additional markup or another
mechanism is provided for determining the correct meaning.

Combining A and B allows you to determine the meaning of contracted words.
Therefore, I propose to delete the success criteria about contracted words. 

It may be that I'm unaware of an important accessibility barrier with
contracted words that I don't do justice with this proposal. If so, please
let me know what I'm missing. I have asked for examples that show
accessibility problems with contracted words but haven't seen or heard any
that clarified the specific accessibility problems with them for me. I
understand that obscure contractions may be hard to understand, but that's
true for difficult uncontracted words as well and is why we require that you
can programmatically locate the meaning of every word at level 2. 

I prefer it if we formulate our SC in broad terms ("word with multiple
meanings") that are applicable to different linguistic features rather than
trying to provide a specific SC for every single linguistic feature that
might cause accessibility problems. 

Yvette Hoitink
Heritas, Enschede, the Netherlands
E-mail: y.p.hoitink@heritas.nl
WWW: http://www.heritas.nl

Received on Saturday, 29 May 2004 14:06:27 UTC