Re: Adopting the media accessibility requirements

On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 3:39 PM, Silvia Pfeiffer
<silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 6:55 AM, Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc> wrote:
>> On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 8:24 AM, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi> wrote:
>>>> Henri: if somebody told you they need a table element and they need to
>>>> be able to have a header text that flies in from the left, makes some
>>>> circles while turning the text orientation 360 degrees and is placed
>>>> into its spot after that, continuing to blink, would you also tell
>>>> them that that cannot be a "must" requirement?
>>>
>>> Yes.
>>
>> I had the same reaction as Henri here.
>
> What if it actually is? You don't outright tell a person that their
> requirement is crap - you ask them to explain why and try to work
> through it. And you don't doubt the process through which the
> requirement has been created. At least not in my world of dealing with
> customers - or I have immediately lost one.

I would tell the person "I see your need, it makes sense to me that
you want it, however due to the limited time we have to develop HTML5,
we'll not be able to support it at least in this version of HTML. You
might also want to look at these here CSS specifications which at
least partially address your need".

It is very similar to what I tell people all the time about firefox:
"I see your need, it makes sense to me that you want it, however due
to the limited time we have to develop Firefox 4, we'll not be able to
support it at least in this version of Firefox. You might also want to
look at these here addons which at least partially address your need"

It is a fact that we won't be able to satisfy every persons "must"
requirements for any given release, so we might as well be open and
honest about it.

>> In other words, if we "adopt these requirements", does it mean:
>>
>> 1) We believe the TF when it says that a user has requested the feature.
>> 2) We believe the TF when it says that a user has requested the
>> feature in order to make a HTML5 documents as accessible to people
>> with disability X as to people without it.
>> 3) We can't ship HTML5 without this feature.
>
> I think you are right: I think there is a clarification necessary of
> what the document will be used for.
>
> It is my understanding that this document has no "legal" binding.
[snip]
> In my personal understanding it was never meant to become a "legally
> binding contract".

Traditionally I believe W3C "requirement" docs have been treated as
"legally binding". I.e. the specification had to implement the
requirements in order to ship. This might be the source of some of the
disconnect here.

As long as "adopting" these requirements simply mean "we believe that
users working with media and media accessibility have requested these
features", and that fact is made clear, I have no problems adopting
them.

Though like I said, I'm not sure how much weight that carries since we
won't be able to satisfy every persons requirements for any given
version of HTML, even if we restrict it to peoples "must" requirements
and even if we restrict it to requirements around a given topic like
media accessibility.

/ Jonas

Received on Sunday, 31 October 2010 00:29:16 UTC