- From: Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 12:17:07 -0500
- To: Anne van Kesteren <annevk@opera.com>, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- Cc: HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>, Shelley Powers <shelleyp@burningbird.net>, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>
I propose strengthening the accessibility design principle to include the following text: "Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential. This does not mean that features should be omitted entirely if not all users can fully make use of them. But alternate/equivalent mechanisms must be provided." The W3C requires that technologies must be accessible. Accessibility features address failure modes that are infrequent, but usually critical when they occur. Anne wrote in www-archive [1]: > You know that paving the cowpaths is not directly about user agent support and users, right? Yes, not directly. The current Cowpath definition in your draft: "When a practice is already widespread among authors, consider adopting it rather than forbidding it or inventing something new." Cowpaths is in the Disputed Principles section of the Wiki [2]. One suggestion was to change the name and definition to something like: Consider Existing Practices: When a practice is already widespread among authors, consider it. Widespread use (cowpaths) are one factor to inform design decisions but not necessarily "pave" the way to them. No set number of use cases proves a feature should be included or excluded from the spec. Cowpaths References in Wiki [3] include several references where they are deemed unfavorable. "The Calf Path by Sam Walter Foss (1895) - Popular humorous poem during the early days of the good roads movement. In the poem, Foss describes how a crooked path originally carved by a calf walking home developed into a major road traveled by hundreds of thousands of people. Foss talks of of blindly following a crooked cow path course." http://www.mitcharf.com/mitcharf/art/poems/calfpath.html Don't Pave the Cowpaths By Mike Arace - discusses why codifying bad practices may not be a good idea. http://mikeomatic.net/?p=59 Paving Cow Paths By Jim Highsmith - Warns that when we pave the cow paths and ignore the highways, we do a disservice to our customers. He says, "In the IT world, 'paving cow paths' means automating a business process as is, without thinking too much about whether or not that process is effective or efficient. Often business process automation initiatives require figuring out entirely new ways of doing business processes -- impossible prior to automation (for example, work flow automation and digital image processing) -- defining more effective and efficient process highways." http://www.stickyminds.com/sitewide.asp?ObjectId=9226&Function=DETAILBROWSE&ObjectType=COL "Cowpaths" or "Cow Paths" in Markmail: http://w3.markmail.org/search/%22cowpath%22%20list:org.w3.public-html?page=1 http://w3.markmail.org/search/%22cow%20path%22%20list:org.w3.public-html?page=1 Best Regards, Laura [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2009May/0074.html [2] http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/ProposedDesignPrinciples?action=recall&rev=84#head-db0511ace65b8f4c1731f806457c9ad771d5c4af [3] http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/ProposedDesignPrinciples?action=recall&rev=84#head-31faee7acc905414b0d3dced4585a7ed3f7bc136 -- Laura L. Carlson
Received on Wednesday, 27 May 2009 17:17:47 UTC