ACTION 32 text

ACTION-32: Send suggested text about implict vs explict user settings 
and sending preferences even if client doesn´t support (Independent User 
Interface Task Force)

I'm pretty unfamiliar with how to deliver my action items in W3C 
processes - if anyone wants to say "you should go to page X ... 
whatever" please feel free (it would be helpful) - here's my response.

I've written some proposed text for the User Context doc. I'm suggesting 
there be an added section 3. that can develop over time to include the 
model detail.
I've tried to keep it simple for now - there's loads more examples could
go in but my purpose in arguing this is to have a placeholder in what is
public (and for us).

Text is attached. For accessibility purposes its also pasted below ..

3. Content and external interface adaptation

In some cases it is beneficial for Web Content authors to be able to 
respond to needs and preferences that require some adaptation of content 
or delivery of alternative content or alternative interface component 
directly in the web application.  There are several cases:

1.	Needs and preferences to which the device is not able to respond.

For example consider a request for caption display where the content has 
no accompanying captions (closed captions). In this case a web app may 
be able fetch alternative content which does have captions. Similar 
examples occur with other adaptation types such as video descriptions 
rendered in audio, transcripts etc.

2.	Needs and preferences to which the device has responded but which 
might require further adaptation from the content/web-app

An example might be where the user has requested inverse visual display 
(e.g. to render white text on a black background) and the device is able 
to respond to that by reversing the display colours.  This does not work 
well for images so when viewing a web page containing images the browser 
might wish to fetch images which are themselves inverted so that when 
the device inverts the colours the images remain viewable.  In this case 
the device has responded but the web app needs to know that.  Another 
device might be unable to respond to a request for inverse colours at 
all and so the web app in this case might deliver inverse colours with 
complete alternative content.

In other cases, a device might respond to a requested need by calling a 
service (such as a service to interpret voice input) and a different 
device might be unable to respond to that and pass that input directly 
to the web app.

Whilst currently beyond the scope of this work at this point it should 
be noted that the same mechanism might provide a general way to request 
alternative content such as alternative assessment questions (for 
accessibility) or alternative learning content such as content of an 
appropriate level of difficulty for that learner.


Cheers

andy
-- 
__________________
Andy Heath
http://axelafa.com