Re: plotting accessibility

Hello Kai,

You are raising lots of good questions. As another member of the DI WG, 
I would like to add my response to your latest ones...

Kai Hendry wrote at 11/06/2004 08:28 ...
> I would like the d-i do more to certify user-agents. Test suites and
> guidelines.
> 
> I don't why UA stuff is under Accessibility:
> http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/

This work was historically motivated primarily by accessibility:
"The User Agent Accessibility Guidelines explain to user agent 
developers how to make their products more accessible to people with 
disabilities and for increasing usability for all users."

> It's confusing! d-i should really come up with uniform user agent
> guidelines. Like UAs must show the url. Must be able to edit it. Must be
> able to view source. Must be able to handle xxxx size documents. Must be
> able to report errors. And so forth.

I strongly disagree. We do not wish to restrict the ability of UA 
developers to offer different ways of controlling web access. Rather, we 
would like to ensure the delivered markup and metadata is appropriate 
for the needs of the user (via their chosen UA). So, for example, I 
should be able to use a voice-only interface to the web if I wish 
(useful for the visually impaired as well as when driving a car). This 
might *not* offer the ability to show or edit a URI, but simply to 
invoke links and back/forward. However, the delivered content must 
clearly be suitable for auditory presentation - either by the origin 
server offering this as a possible representation for the accessed page, 
or by some adaptation (in the UA or an intermediary) from text to speech 
(which requires some sematic markup of the text to do a good job).

> Else where else is this going to be done?

UA interfaces should not be standardised. It should be a matter of UA 
providers meeting the variety of needs of the marketplace, and being 
judged on their relative merits.

> If I pick up a mobile, and use their XHTML browser I would like to know
> if it's going to work or not. 

If a UA claims to support XHTML, it should be possible to certify that 
it actually conforms to the Recommendation (by test suites etc). 
Incresing emphasis is now being placed on providing test suites and 
conformance requirements with all W3C Recommendations (see 
http://www.w3.org/QA/).

Regards,

Roger Gimson
-- 
roger.gimson@hp.com | HP Labs, Bristol BS34 8QZ, UK | +44 117-312-8167

Received on Friday, 11 June 2004 05:07:57 UTC