RE: Technique or Checkpoint

Denis,
I did not include the entire text in my message. I was hoping people would
refer to the present draft which has more of an explanation, justification
and description of what needs to be done.

The primary points here is that we are talking about the prepackaged media
including clip art that are shipped with the authoring tool. The action we
want is that they come with professionally written alt text and
descriptions. This is an authoring tool developer action.
Anyways, please refer to the present draft for clarification.

Jutta

At 9:08 AM -0500 2/12/99, 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

Received on Friday, 12 February 1999 11:37:40 UTC