Re: [style guide] Tone section

On 25 Jul 2017, at 17:23, Sharron Rush wrote:

> yes, fine with me for you to make that change

+1, maybe link to Understanding SC 3.1.5 as we’re striving for WCAG 
AAA where possible and there are some good techniques in there to make 
texts simpler.

https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/meaning-supplements.html

(Of course it will be hard to always conform to this SC due to the 
technical nature of our content, but let’s include it as our North 
Star, so to speak…)

Eric

>
> On Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 10:21 AM, Shawn Henry <shawn@w3.org> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the tersification, James & Sharron!
>>
>> I'm not sure about "with a reading level on average of 10th grade."
>>
>> Some issue around that, but I don't think it's high priority right 
>> now.
>> Are you OK if we leave that out for now (and leave "use plain 
>> language"),
>> and if folks feel strongly about it, we can revisit it later?
>>
>> ~Shawn
>>
>>
>> On 7/13/2017 12:28 PM, Sharron Rush wrote:
>>
>>> Updated Tone section and added the example in the Editorial section.
>>>
>>> Thanks James!
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 10:04 AM, Shawn Henry <shawn@w3.org <mailto:
>>> shawn@w3.org>> wrote:
>>>
>>>     On 7/2/2017 1:22 PM, Sharron Rush wrote:
>>>
>>>         I removed this ''[@@ to do: tersify this paragraph]'' note 
>>> from
>>> the paragraph as I reviewed it, tried a few things, and finally 
>>> decided to
>>> leave as is.  Tone is a subtle thing to consider and all of the 
>>> elements
>>> referenced seem important to help us all arrive at an appropriate 
>>> tone for
>>> the variety of docs. OK with everyone?
>>>
>>>
>>>     James in 
>>> <https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/35532/EO-Weekly-7-Jul-2017/
>>> results#xq6 
>>> <https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/35532/EO-Weekly-7-Jul-2017/
>>> results#xq6>>:
>>>
>>>     [I feel strongly about the following]
>>>
>>>     I think the style guide needs to add strong preference for 
>>> brevity
>>> and use of bullets over paragraphs along with adding some visual 
>>> content as
>>> appropriate. This needs to be mentioned specifically in a new 
>>> section so
>>> editors are clear that their primary job is to try to cut half of 
>>> the
>>> sentences and half of the words while adding some visual content to 
>>> create
>>> visual anchors and break things up more. (Remember the 3 issues this
>>> project is tackling are the out-of-date visual design, findability, 
>>> and the
>>> **wall-of-text effect**.) The style guide itself, much like many of 
>>> our
>>> resources, tends to try to explain things with many examples, 
>>> leading to
>>> long, wordy, complex, rambling, unnecessarily verbose sentences.
>>>
>>>      >From the style guide: "From Technical Reports and Publications 
>>> to
>>> How-To guides for implementation to documents that help human beings 
>>> make
>>> sense of complex technical specifications, the tone of the 
>>> presentations
>>> may vary considerably. In general WAI documents will have a tone 
>>> that is
>>> welcoming, encouraging, and even inspiring around web accessibility.
>>> Materials should educate people without patronizing or confusing 
>>> them and
>>> should be as plain spoken, jargon-free, and straight forward as 
>>> possible."
>>>
>>>     I applaud the obvious goal of comprehensiveness and clarity, but 
>>> each
>>> of those sentences has a set of 3 comma separated examples. The last
>>> sentence has a second set of 3 things for a reader to parse. Less is 
>>> more
>>> when writing for the web.
>>>
>>>     As an example of what I think the style guide needs to 
>>> communicate
>>> about the editing tasks ahead of us, I would rewrite the section to 
>>> say
>>> "Given the various types of documents, tone may vary; however in 
>>> general,
>>> WAI documents will have a tone that is welcoming, encouraging, and
>>> inspiring. Materials should be straight-forward, and educate without
>>> patronizing, using plain language with a reading level on average of 
>>> 10th
>>> grade." and even use that rewrite as an example of what we want 
>>> people to
>>> do.
>>>
>>>     If we can pull maybe 5 sentences from existing resource and do 
>>> that
>>> to them and include that in the new section, it would help a lot.
>>>
>>>     ###
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Sharron Rush | Executive Director | Knowbility.org | @knowbility
>>> /Equal access to technology for people with disabilities/
>>>
>>
>
>
> -- 
> Sharron Rush | Executive Director | Knowbility.org | @knowbility
> *Equal access to technology for people with disabilities*





--

Eric Eggert
Web Accessibility Specialist
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) at World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Received on Tuesday, 25 July 2017 15:29:27 UTC