Re: accessibility review and 4.0 release

This evening I visited the Formats and Protocols Working Group page to
review the list of items for the HTML review, and noticed that Daniel had
been diligently at work, updating this information. There are a few
comments that I wish to make at this stage:

1. Since my original message on the topic, I have revised my braille media
type proposal. As stated in my Braille CSS requirements document, I have
suggested that the following two media types be defined, parallel to the
"print" and "screen" types, to distinguish between embossed and dynamic
braille:

media="braille embossed"
media="braille displayed"

2. As Daniel has pointed out, the desire to refer to an image as the
bullet which is to be displayed by graphical user agents when rendering an
unordered list, can be adequately met by means of style sheets. I would
like to add my vote to this approach.

3. I also support the proposal to reserve an "abbrevdic" link type;
indeed, if memory serves correctly, I was responsible for originally
raising that issue in this forum. Consideration should also be given,
though perhaps not in the short term, to the relationship between
abbrevdic and the phonetic markup action item: would it be appropriate to
encode phonetic information in a dictionary that can be linked to a
document, rather than embedding it within the document itself? One
advantage of this strategy is that the same phonetic information can be
re-used across a range of documents, and it can act as an exception list
to regulate the pronunciation offered by speech synthesizers.

4. In my response to Greg Lowney's suggestion that HTML be enhanced to
allow an alternative presentational ordering of a document to be defined,
I suggested that it might be worthwhile to consider whether this need
could be better satisfied by pursuing changes to CSS. HTML 4.0 already
offers the DIV and SPAN elements, which would permit the relevant segments
of a document to be identified. Media-specific styles could then be used
to control their relative positioning in the output. There is already a
CSS positioning draft, but I have not read it and thus can not comment on
whether it would enable this requirement to be satisfied.

5. Returning to the media type issue, Al's suggestion to define style
properties that would simulate a "text only" environment for the benefit
of authors who are only able to view their documents with a graphical
display, should be considered. If it is deemed necessary, then an
appropriate media type should be reserved. There are already services
available on the web which can return the document in the form in which it
would be displayed by Lynx. Whether such services provide an sufficient
solution or whether a style sheet along these lines is needed, remains an
open question that Al can perhaps elaborate upon.

6. I would appreciate clarification of the "alternate SS semantics" issue.
The messages referred to on Daniel's web page are all on the W3C member
site, hence inaccessible to non-members.

7. I have recently commented at some length on the LONGDESC issue, and
would still proclaim my indecision. Another relevant point which does not
appear to have been mentioned, is the need to define how the LONGDESC
attribute, if accepted, should be rendered by HTML user agents in
different media. In particular, to what extent, if at all, would LONGDESC
fit within the "generic attribute" selection mechanism proposed for CSS 2,
and would LONGDESC necessitate amendments to the CSS proposals so that the
rendering of the link to the long description in various media could be
regulated by style sheets?

Table accessibility is an important issue, consideration of which awaits
publication of the new table proposals in the upcoming HTML 4.0 draft.

Are there any items which I have forgotten to address?

Received on Monday, 15 September 1997 06:09:13 UTC