- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 19:26:40 -0400 (EDT)
- To: Anne Pemberton <apembert@crosslink.net>
- cc: Joe Roeder <Jroeder@nib.org>, "'wai list'" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Unfortunately it would take more than guidelines, it would take the adoption by designers of these icons. In the graphic design world, I suspect that any such icons will be very difficult to sell (after all, the idea is not very new, and the use of a standard icon for 'home' - a very common idiom) has never managed to take off. I think the problem is that designers want to create a particular look and feel for their websites which is individual and memorable as well as comprehensible. I agree that havnig standard conventions is a good idea, but I think it is as difficult as convincing the world to learn Esperanto. This hasn't even been done in Europe, despite 100 years of effort on the part of esperantists. French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, are all direct descendents of the one language, yet people persist with their own language rather than facilitating communication. Having english spoken throughout the united kingdom was only achieved with a lot of bloodshed. One of the underlying principles of the Web is that it should be possible to create a web where people can deal with natural language, and computer- comprehensible information is used to work out how the navigation works. This work is going on in the W3C at large, since it is seen as important to the web as a whole, not just for accessibility. Charles McCN On Sat, 12 Jun 1999, Anne Pemberton wrote: At 02:32 PM 6/11/1999 -0400, Joe Roeder wrote: > Thinking about those highway signs, should there be a set of >standard navigation icons for the internet that everyone agrees with and >that the WAI encourages in the guidelines? > > Just some food for thought. Joe, this would be a great help and would be reasonably easy to do. It would take time for people to learn to use a common set of symbols, but once it is started in motion, it could become as common as alt tags are. It would take guidelines to bring this about. Anne Anne L. Pemberton http://www.pen.k12.va.us/Pav/Academy1 http://www.erols.com/stevepem/apembert apembert@crosslink.net Enabling Support Foundation http://www.enabling.org --Charles McCathieNevile mailto:charles@w3.org phone: +1 617 258 0992 http://www.w3.org/People/Charles W3C Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI MIT/LCS - 545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139, USA
Received on Sunday, 13 June 1999 19:26:45 UTC