Gilman-1

Greetings Al, thanks for your comments on the content selection last call 
[1]. As part of this you start with --The basic idea is to support UAAG10, 
Guideline 2 "Ensure User Access to All Content."   --

The DIWG assigned this comment the identifier Gilman-1

This mail documents DIWG's response to your comments.

DIWG Response
=============

We have not accepted this comments. Our reasons are as follows . . . 

There is a tension between the aims of UAAG10, of those that wish to 
protect some groups of users from inappropriate content,(reference to the 
metadata workshop in Dublin) and the physical capabilities of devices. 
DISelect needs to take account of all of the reasons why content selection 
may be needed and hence must have capabilities that might not conform to 
the needs of any one in particular.

Considering first the case of device capabilities, there are many examples 
today of situations in which it is impossible to send material to allow 
user selection. There are well known situations in which sending material 
intended for a different device, perhaps using an entirely different 
markup language, will cause it to crash. Worse, there are known cases 
where inappropriate content can damage the device to the point where it 
needs to be returned to the manufacturer. Although such situations should 
improve in future, one aim of DISelect is to support the currently 
available range of devices, so considerations like this are of great 
importance.

In the case of inappropriate conent, there are groups who need to ensure 
that, for example, adult material is not sent to devices being used by 
minors. Any scheme that only supports user selection of content at the 
device cannot be used as part of a system that supports such use cases.

DIWG is sympathetic to the aims of UAAG10, but feels that it would be 
inappropriate to try and use DISelect to enforce appropriate author 
behaviour. We suggest that a better solution would be to expand WCAG to 
cover appropriate use of DISelect to support accessibility.

DIWG also suggests that guidelines like UAAG10, while appropriate for 
current and legacy technologies, lack some ambition in environments where 
better semantic information, better information about user preferences and 
distributed adaptation can truely tailor user experience for a much wider 
variety of users. It should surely not be the case that simply because 
someone has a disability that they are forced manually to tailor their 
user experience? DIWG would like to see the possibilities of adaptation 
together with proactive involvement from assistive technologies, provide 
an environment in which the vast majority of users with or without 
disabilities can be served without having them having to intervene 
manually.

[1] 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-diselect-editors/2005AprJun/0012.html 


Regards, Roland