FYI: Re: Accessibility of "fusion" services

[Copy of message I wrote in reply to a question from Brian on WAI-IG list. 
Very related to UD/DA.]

>On Mon, 12 Feb 2001, Brian Kelly wrote:
>
>  We are seeing a growth of "fusion" services - Web sites in which the
content
>  comes from a variety of sources (e.g My.Netscape).
>
>  Has any work been done on the accessibility of fusion services[?]

AG::

There are vague statements in WCAG 1.0 about providing clear and consistent
orientation and navigation, and using consistent styling.  These are topics
that are "less than half solved" by these statements, and are areas where
sites
that do content aggregation from disparate sources are likely to perform badly
without a lot of work in these areas.

One positive sign here is that commercial aggregators, at least, are
looking to
use XML data formats at the OEM service tier and only inject presentation at
the webserver where this will all be controlled by the retail/portal site.

It takes a more subtle blending theory than CSS provides to deal gracefully
with a mix of ideas from the source domains of components together whith
additional ideas from the domain in which compontents are juxtaposed.

This question relates directly to the "better tools for representing
structure"
issues that Jon Gunderson raised concerning XHTML 2.0 requirements based on
lessons learned from writing the User Agent Guidelines.

<<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-tech-comments/2000Oct/0001.html>h
ttp://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-tech-comments/2000Oct/0001.html>h
ttp://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-tech-comments/2000Oct/0001.html

The Grid Computing Environments Working Group of the Global Grid Forum is
undertaking a data-gathering exercise in search of consensus best practices
for
what they see as their domain of operation.  I want to leave "their domain of
operation" as a variable, here, because I believe the scope is not clear until
the practices are laid out and one can discern the right kinds of boundaries
within the neighborhood.  But they operate Web-to-something portals, and so
their activity is one place where an industry doing the sort of thing you are
asking about, Brian, and they are trying to figure out what works and what
doesn't.

<<http://www.gridforum.org/groups/WG.html#GCE>http://www.gridforum.org/grou
ps/WG.html#GCE><http://www.gridforum.org/group>http://www.gridforum.org/group
s/WG.html#GCE -- Computing Environments Group
<<http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/ud4grid>http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/ud4grid><ht
tp://trace.wisc.edu/docs/ud4grid>http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/ud4grid/ --
working paper linking Grid operations and Universal Design


If someone you know or from DESIRE is involved in the European Data Grid
project and will be at the Global Grid Forum meeting, It would help if they
can
spend some time with the Computing Environments group.

<<http://www.ggf1.nl/>http://www.ggf1.nl/><http://www.ggf1.nl/>http://www.g
gf1.nl/ -- meeting in the Netherlands in
March

Al

>Cheers
>
>Charles McCN
>
>On Mon, 12 Feb 2001, Brian Kelly wrote:
>
>  We are seeing a growth of "fusion" services - Web sites in which the
content
>  comes from a variety of sources (e.g My.Netscape).
>
>  Has any work been done on the accessibility of fusion services.  If
>  individual fragments are accessible, with the fusion site be accessibility,
>  or could different approaches to ensuring the fragments are accessible
>  result in the final site being inaccessible.
>
>  Some areas to consider:
>
>    o Mixture of formattiing ion HTML and CSS
>    o Different apporaoches to use of CSS
>    o Tab orders
>    o Use of ABBREV and ACRONYM
>    o Colour schemes
>    o Different approaches to use of ALT and TITLE atrtributes
>      etc.
>
>  Thanks
>
>  Brian
>
>  --------------------------------------------------------------
>  Brian Kelly
>  UKOLN
>  University of Bath
>  BATH
>  BA2 7AY
>  Email: B.Kelly@ukoln.ac.uk
>  Phone: (+44) 1225 323943
>
>
>-- 
>Charles McCathieNevile   
<<http://www.w3.org/People/Charles>http://www.w3.org/People/Charles><http:/
/www.w3.org/People/Charles%A0>http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  phone: +61
409 134 136
>W3C Web Accessibility Initiative    
<<http://www.w3.org/WAI>http://www.w3.org/WAI><http://www.w3.org/WAI%A0%A0%
A0>http://www.w3.org/WAI    fax: +1 617 258 5999
>Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia
>(or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex,
France)
> 

Received on Monday, 12 February 2001 12:32:15 UTC