RE: Technique or Checkpoint

The relevance of the proposal to UA was a request to provide extra
information which can be stored in various formats.

As I understand it, GIF, PNG, WebCGM, JPEG, and some other formats allow
textual information to be included in an image. My only experience of this
is GIF, where the information is commonly used to control animations, but
it is also possible to add titles, etc. Where those things are present in
the image (or where the UA supports a given format) that information
should be made available to the user.

Collecting the information is the bit that is relevant to Authoring Tools
but not to user agents.

Charles McCathieNevile

On Fri, 12 Feb 1999, Denis Anson wrote:

  I would argue that it is almost a checkpoint.  Checkpoints should be in the
  approximate form of "provide this functionality."  It should be obvious from
  the checkpoint what abilities the checkpoint provides.  Hence, this isn't
  quite there yet.  It is an arbitrary statement that you should "do this,"
  without any explanation of why or to what extent.  It also doesn't define
  what a "professionally written" description is: what profession?  How
  detailed should the description be?
  
  The statement might be rephrased along the lines of: Provide a text-based
  means for the end user to determine the content of multimedia files (e.g.
  clip art).
  
  This phrasing would state the intent of the checkpoint, and be based on
  functionality.  The technique associated with this checkpoint might be
  something like "Provide grammatically correct and descriptively accurate
  text documents and/or meaningful filenames that describe multimedia files.
  
  Now, on the other hand, is this the responsibility of the user agent?  Do
  user *agents*  include clip art and other multimedia files, or do they just
  render them? It seems pointless to require an agent to generate a
  description of files that come from elsewhere.
  
  Denis Anson, MS, OTR
  Assistant Professor
  Computer Access Specialist
  College Misericordia
  301 Lake Street
  Dallas, PA 18612
  
  RESNA
  The International Organization of Assistive Technology Professionals
  
  Member since 1989
  
  
  
  -----Original Message-----
  From: w3c-wai-ua-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ua-request@w3.org]On
  Behalf Of Charles McCathieNevile
  Sent: Thursday, February 11, 1999 4:47 PM
  To: Kynn Bartlett
  Cc: WAI AU Guidelines; WAI UA group
  Subject: Re: Technique or Checkpoint
  
  
  Actually, it sounds like a checkpoint to me - a thing which Authoring
  Tools "should" do to significantly increase the accessibility of the end
  product. It is certainly not a priority 1. Techniques for this include
  supporting the use of standards which allow information to be encoded with
  it (such as GIF), as well as asking User Agent Guidelines to consider
  providing access to that information.
  
  Charles McCN
  
  On Thu, 11 Feb 1999, Kynn Bartlett wrote:
  
    At 03:52 p.m. 02/11/99 -0500, Jutta Treviranus wrote:
    >Should the point about "Including professionally written descriptions for
    >all multimedia files (e.g., clip art) packaged with the software"
    >be a checkpoint and therefore something that must or should be done or
    >should it be a technique and therefore a suggested way of fulfilling the
    >guideline 2.6?
  
    This sounds like a technique to me.
  
    The principle is:
  
        "Make it easy for users to supply alternative text."
  
    The technique is:
  
        "...by including default descriptions for things you give them."
  
    Anyone have suggested working for the checkpoint, though?
  
    --
    Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                   http://www.kynn.com/
    Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet      http://www.idyllmtn.com/
    Six Principles of Accessible Web Design:         http://www.kynn.com/+six
    Spring 1999 Virtual Dog Show!                     http://www.dogshow.com/
    Enroll now for my web accessibility course    http://www.kynn.com/+access
  
  
  --Charles McCathieNevile            mailto:charles@w3.org
  phone: +1 617 258 0992   http://purl.oclc.org/net/charles
  W3C Web Accessibility Initiative    http://www.w3.org/WAI
  MIT/LCS  -  545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139,  USA
  

--Charles McCathieNevile            mailto:charles@w3.org
phone: +1 617 258 0992   http://purl.oclc.org/net/charles
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative    http://www.w3.org/WAI
MIT/LCS  -  545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139,  USA

Received on Friday, 12 February 1999 09:13:51 UTC