Re: conflation of issues or convergence of interests?

On Sat, 28 Jul 2007 14:47:20 +0200, Patrick H. Lauke  
<redux@splintered.co.uk> wrote:
>> I'd like to see some user testing of this issue, and some documentation  
>> of existing video sites and their accessibility features.  Are there  
>> any existing video sites that provide textual alternatives for videos?   
>> If so, we can look at how they do it and, through user testing,  
>> evaluate how successful their approach is.
>
> Just wondering (as usual again) why, if we're working on a new set of  
> language building blocks, we need to look at current practices that use  
> the limited vocabulary available today...whatever sites currently do is  
> obviously related to how HTML4/XHTML1.x handles video and such. Why  
> should that inform how this new and improved language should handle it  
> as well? But yeh, let's go along with that...

If the new language requires a completely different architecture it is  
unlikely to be adopted. Or maybe it is adopted, but the accessibility  
features are not being put to use. I think it will be easier for features  
to become adopted if they don't require a lot of rethinking, but rather  
can be incrementally deployed. I think that's one of the reasons it's  
important to look how authors are solving problems now.

I suppose it's a bit like social science. Getting statistics on what's  
currently being done to see how we can improve the situation without  
radically changing it.


-- 
Anne van Kesteren
<http://annevankesteren.nl/>
<http://www.opera.com/>

Received on Saturday, 28 July 2007 13:02:50 UTC