Telling a story without words

Telling a story without words

Ivan and Dan*,

Let me first say how great it was to see you both today.
During the day and especially the panel, it occurred to me that you 
both might be able to help.

Adults with severe learning difficulties have a small vocabulary, some 
may use signing and symbols.
My concern is with graphics, accessible interactivity, relation and 
thus semantics, aka
"The study of the relationship of signs and symbols and what they 
represent". please add sound effects!
symbols may be used sequentially or pictorially, words don't generally 
have this facility, words catalogue alphabetically, pictures and things 
do not.
we have theatre, drama, and the arts because they define, express and 
communicate themselves better than words do; they entertain.

Please take a look at these simple games, and imagine, how they might 
be made accessible, and what their essential semantic content might be:

Games designed in response to specific needs related to: developing 
mouse or touchscreen skills, together with learning about cause and 
effect, are here:
http://www.peepo.com/alfi-x/splat.html . Each has a specific intended 
audience, though you may enjoy them all, for instance:
The lightening game reflects the fact that a significant number of 
students click the mouse incessantly and apparently without intent.
and for more games*

Ivan: Why was no mention was made by you of scripting? by avoiding this 
topic W3C is failing us all.
accessible interactivity is a complex topic, and "Script Techniques for 
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0."
http://www.learningdifficulty.org/develop/script-techs.html is 
gathering dust. SVG cannot be truly accessible without significant 
effort being devoted to understanding the meaning of accessible 
games(1).

Dan: Do you have any pointers to using  RDF with SVG, books, URIs, time 
?  Relationships between a small number of objects can be complex, and 
it is likely that this is a more difficult problem than creating a 
static ontology, or many. I'm in the process of conceiving a number of 
simple accessible SVG games to encourage adoption of numeracy and 
literacy skills.

exhausted, phew!
thanks again.

Jonathan Chetwynd
http://www.peepo.com

(1)as an aside, is there a possibility that someone might sue Sony 
because their games are inaccessible?
Well I'm currently pursuing some of my contacts in the gaming industry 
to see if there is any interest on their part in contributing to a 
definition of what accessible gaming means and hence some standards, or 
guidelines.

*In a graphical game, we may say the red ball is on the yellow brick. 
If the player can move the ball, this relation needs to be redefined 
continuously. Then we can discover how many people currently have their 
ball in place.

another example: http://www.peepo.com/crap/argo3/ is that if the cat is 
near the bin we may think "Top Cat" or if the cat is near the owl "£5"
this relation is not absolutely pre-definable, and is certainly quite 
personal, but non the less semantics.

today a man with a newspaper reminded me that I needed a copy of the 
Guardian, thus I discovered that I had come out without a wallet....

The success of the Simpsons, may in part be due to the complex semantic 
content.

we need to move away from the nouns, towards the verbs, quite possibly 
via, preposition (as suggested by Michael).
Do we really need massive databases to tell us what relations are 
essential?
Isn't there some way to indicate in real time the state of the system? 
however crudely.
To guess at a few possible issues, and then find out which are critical 
via feedback.
buttons that are never clicked, because they are off the screen.

*this is the public list that seemed most appropriate in the time 
available.
If this should be somewhere else, my apologies.