Re: Author incentives for accessibility

> Accessibility applies to all of us.

amen, brother!  accessibility cannot be seperated from usability, 
as one cannot use an object or tool if one cannot access it, nor 
can one access an object or tool if there is no indication that 
the object or tool even exists...

as sander eloquently expressed the situation, the solution lies 
in the authoring tools, especially when perceptual black holes 
are created by use of uni-modal (read: visually-oriented) authoring 
tools and concepts...  (which is why i, personally, still hand code)

as with the user agent issues, i would refer the list to the 
Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines, whose purview is not 
only ensuring that the output of an authoring tool is accessible,
but that the tool itself is accessible:

ATAG 1.0: http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG10
ATAG 2.0 Working Draft: http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG20/
Authoring Tool Accessibility Working Group: http://www.w3.org/WAI/AU/

there is also an Evaluation and Repair activity within WAI, headquartered 
at:

http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/

the ER WG currently has 1 document in Last Call:

Evaluation & Repair Schema 1.0:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-EARL10-Schema-20070323/

and is moving in that direction with another:

HTTP Vocabulary in RDF:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-HTTP-in-RDF-20070323/

there is also important work being done on roles and states in the 
Protocols & Formats group, under the rubric ARIA: Accessible Rich 
Interface Applications -- consult:

Roadmap for Accessible Rich Interface Applications (ARIA Roadmap):
http://www.w3.org/TR/aria-roadmap/

Roles for Accessible Rich Interface Applications (ARIA Roles)
http://www.w3.org/TR/aria-role/

States and Properties Module for Accessible Rich Interface Applications 
(ARIA States & Properties):
http://www.w3.org/TR/aria-state/

how does the ARIA work fit in with HTML?  consult the following:

Embedding Accessibility Role and State Metadata in HTML Documents:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/adaptable/HTML4/embedding-20061212.html

all of which should -- nay, must -- inform our work on HTML5,
gregory.

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LANGUAGE, n.  The music with which we charm the serpents guarding 
another's treasure.     -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
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            Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net
     Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/index.html
UBATS: United Blind Advocates for Talking Signs: http://ubats.org
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Received on Friday, 18 May 2007 19:28:36 UTC