- From: Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis <bhawkeslewis@googlemail.com>
- Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2010 20:08:38 +0000
- To: Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>
- Cc: HTML Accessibility Task Force <public-html-a11y@w3.org>, HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 1:52 AM, Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com> wrote: > I've drafted a Change Proposal for ISSUE-122. > http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/TextAlternativesIssue122 Thanks Laura. > Ideas for improvement appreciated. Some counter-arguments you might wish to address: * The change proposal suggests the HTML WG defers to the WCAG WG for guidance on text alternatives because WCAG WG is chartered to provide guidance on making content accessible to people with disabilities. But making content accessible to people with disabilities is not the only use of text alternatives. Other uses include making content media-independent for all users (so that, for example, users can browse web content from a text browser), making content more robust (so that, for example, users see text alternatives when resources fail to transfer over the network), facilitating automation (e.g. allowing an automated click on a named image control), and enabling indexing and discovery of non-text content via search engines. WCAG WG is not chartered to provided guidance on these other uses. * The change proposal implies that WGs working on language specifications should defer to WGs chartered to provide guidance on cross-cutting concerns like accessibility for examples on how to use those language specifications. How should cases where multiple cross-cutting concerns, for which different WGs have responsibility, be handled? For example, whose role is it provide guidance when a text alternative includes a change of language? WCAG WG or the Internationalization Core Working Group, chartered "to help specification writers, web masters, content authors, and others involved in developing and implementing the Web understand the issues involved and the techniques available with regard to supporting international use of Web technology" (http://www.w3.org/2006/10/i18n-recharter/core-charter)? Isn't the group designing the markup language a good group to provide guidance that pulls such cross-cutting concerns together for that markup language? * An important aspect of switching the responsibility for producing guidance from HTML WG to WCAG WG is that it involves switching from an group that is /comparatively/ open in terms of membership and proceedings to a more closed group (people who are not working for a W3C member can participate in HTML WG on request, most proceedings in HTML WG operate on open mailing lists, the HTML WG has an open bug tracker). Some participants may feel that more open groups produce more effective guidance. * The change proposal suggests that text alternative provision is "subjective". If it is /truly/ subjective then deferring to another group cannot deliver more effective guidance, since they can only offer yet another opinion. This is an argument for eliminating such guidance altogether. * Diversity of opinions suggests issues are complicated, but does not necessarily mean they are subjective. For example, you mention that some users want descriptions of mood-setting images and some don't. One can imagine markup which would allow user agents to present such descriptions only to the users who want them. Such potential feature changes suggest that the group designing the language should confront these complicated issues head-on, not farm them out to a third party. * The change proposal suggests that tasking WCAG WG with producing guidance "Helps in the goal of modularizing W3C documents", citing an email from Tim which in turn cites a blog post by Tim (http://www.w3.org/QA/2008/01/modularity). In that post, Tim explains that the basic benefit of modularization is "that one module can evolve or be replaced without affecting the others." But guidance about usage of features cannot be safely evolved or replaced without affecting the design of features, and vice versa. Splitting these tasks between different working groups does not provide effective modularization. * Disagreements about guidance for text alternatives reflect disagreements about what HTML features should be included for providing text alternatives (e.g. should we include "longdesc"?) about the basic semantics of features of those features (does "alt" represent a short text alternative or a full text substitute?), at least as much as disagremeents about what constitutes a good text alternatives. Conforming features and HTML semantics are inalienable concerns of the HTML WG. -- Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
Received on Monday, 8 November 2010 20:09:12 UTC