[Bug 13432] Editorial changes to The Video element (1 of 5)

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=13432

--- Comment #9 from Ian 'Hixie' Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> 2011-09-27 20:17:18 UTC ---
John, if you replied to my last e-mail on that thread, I never got your e-mail.
Could you send it again? It was the one asking for the same as in comment 7.

(In reply to comment #8)
> 
> Specific to this bug, the strategies of users who are Blind (versus users who
> may have any number of other vision related disabilities) as they interact with
> multi-media content will often be different, based upon the single criteria of
> having some vision versus having no vision, thus there is a distinction there
> that should be acknowledged. 
> 
> The same is true for users who are profoundly deaf versus users who have other
> types of hearing issues - once again the distinction generally being at the
> point of total versus partial non-hearing. For those who are profoundly deaf,
> there is also a socio-political distinction due to that community's use of sign
> language.

Agreed. There is also a distinction between those who have dyscalculia and
those who do not. And those who are susceptible to seizures and those who are
not. And so on (I gave quite a long list in the e-mail I sent you). My question
remains the same: how do I know which of these groups to include and which to
just gloss over as "those with other physical or cognitive disabilities"?

I listed the blind and deaf explicitly because those represent two demographics
clearly in need of special consideration when it comes to making video
accessible, which are widely recognised as such, and which are not in the
slightest bit confusing to authors who have never thought of the topic before.
As such, they provide a way to rapidly introduce such authors to the
realisation that they have something to do, without overwhelming them or
confusing them.

Adding more demographics is a risky proposition: we have to balance making such
authors realise the problem is even bigger than just the deaf and blind,
without making them think the problem is so big as to be insurmountable, which
might lead them to give up and not provide any accessibility features at all.

In the current text, I tried to strike this balance by listing the blind and
deaf explicitly, and then pointing out that there are others to consider also.
This provides the clear message mentioned above, while also suggesting to
authors who are open-minded that there is more information they could find
which would address even more groups of people and thus be even better, without
scaring away those authors who are not ready for such a realisation.


But again I ask: if we're going to be politically correct, how do I determine
which of the many groups who need something here should be mentioned
explicitly, and which should be glossed over?

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Received on Tuesday, 27 September 2011 20:17:25 UTC