- From: Loretta Guarino Reid <lorettaguarino@google.com>
- Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2011 16:51:35 -0700
- To: "Pant, Devarshi Lockheed Martin" <Devarshi.Pant@ssa.gov>
- Cc: "public-comments-wcag20@w3.org" <public-comments-wcag20@w3.org>
- Message-ID: <AANLkTi=5WuGk18YxWYJ+biZS1w96Anj6bkKKJ3s2AYfs@mail.gmail.com>
On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 8:50 AM, Pant, Devarshi Lockheed Martin < Devarshi.Pant@ssa.gov> wrote: > Name: Devarshi Pant > Email: devarshipant@gmail.com > Affiliation: Consultant > Document: Techniques for WCAG 2.0<http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20101014/> > Item Number: Techniques T3: Using standard text formatting conventions for > headings <http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20101014/T3> (TXT) ( > http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20101014/T3) > Part of Item: Description > Comment Type: Format Convention > Summary of Issue: Formatting Convention > Comment (Including rationale for any proposed change): > To decipher a heading, a screen reader user will have to remember the rule: > “two blank lines preceding the heading” and “a blank line following a > heading”. This rule can easily get complex when other formatting options are > introduced in the document structure to convey the structural meaning to > different user groups. What happens when a hyperlink, underlined text, or a > caption is to be expressed using plain text? The list goes on when we factor > in other ways documents are currently presented. It only makes sense to have > its plain text counterpart elicit same structural meaning using more > intuitive encodings than line breaks and non printing characters. > > Proposed Change: > Use mnemonics instead. Remove references to non printed characters and line > breaks. There are richer ways to convey this information to all user groups. > For example, to express a heading in a plain text document, using (H)This > is a Heading(H) will be easier to follow than the blank line format. Note > that the enclosed character is a mnemonic for heading. > Using the same rule, a underline can represented as (U)This is an > underline(U). > A hyperlink will be (HY)This is a hyperlink(HY). > This way even users groups will be able to understand a plain text document > by visually parsing it. > > > ================================ Response from the Working Group ================================ The purpose of this technique is to talk about plain text. If you add markup as you suggest and is no longer a plain text document (unless you consider an HTML document to be plain text). This does create constraints on how you write a plain text document. But it does give you a way of creating plain text documents can be deciphered. And that is the purpose of the technique. To allow you to create a plain text document that has no markup but yet can be deciphered by a screen reader designed to work with plain text documents that constrain themselves to these rules. Loretta Guarino Reid, WCAG WG Co-Chair Gregg Vanderheiden, WCAG WG Co-Chair Michael Cooper, WCAG WG Staff Contact On behalf of the WCAG Working Group
Received on Wednesday, 23 March 2011 23:52:05 UTC