FYI, comments received on WCAG2ICT

Hi all,
      I wanted to draw your attention the single set of comments received
so far on the WCAG2ICT public draft.  These are from Duff Johnson who
commented on our first draft as well. In addition to some editorial
comments, his main issues were:
         Intro section: WCAG2ICT doesn't reference any of the ISO standards
         where we say: "Authors and developers are encouraged to seek
         relevant advice about current best practices…"  I thought we had
         answered a similar question from either him or someone else on the
         first draft on this very topic.
         Intro section: Should mention other web-specific assumptions in
         WCAG 2.0 other than simply the presence of a user agent in all of
         its forms.
         2.4 Set of documents definition: He finds the definition confusing
         and gave examples where he can't tell if it applies.
         2.5 Set of software: Similar confusion over this definition
         5.0 Comments on Conformance: Suggested edits to the contents of
         this section to be more clear and concise and has some issues with
         list items 2 (is it necessary?) as well as 3 & 4 (where the
         examples could be made less web-centric).
         General comment on remainder of the document: Concerned that our
         approach doesn't provide enough information to help a government
         agency to craft policies that cover all types of ICT and implement
         a WCAG 2.0-based policy using the guidance in our document.


Best regards,


Mary Jo Mueller
IBM Research ► Human Ability & Accessibility Center
11501 Burnet Road, Bldg. 904 Office 5D017, Austin, Texas 78758
512-286-9698 T/L 363-9698
maryjom@us.ibm.com


www.ibm.com/able and w3.ibm.com/able
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become more, you are a leader.”  ~ John Quincy Adams



From: Peter Korn <peter.korn@oracle.com>
To: "public-wcag2ict-tf@w3.org" <public-wcag2ict-tf@w3.org>,
Date: 07/07/2013 08:48 PM
Subject: Starting a new thread - re: Note 3 for definition of "document"



Hi gang,

I'm back home from my vacation, and I'm trying to make sense of - by my
count - 15 distinct proposals for how to phrase Note 3!  I find that
understanding them all by going through the e-mails for them all nearly
impossible, so I've tried to capture them all, in chronological order (as
they appeared in my inbox) at the bottom of our existing wiki page New Note
3 for definition of "document".

I believe there are 4 "latest" proposals on the table.  In chronological
order, they are (grossly paraphrased):
      v7 from Peter Korn: a marrying of Mike's earlier proposal with text
      that I thought David liked
      v8 from David MacDonald: edit to Peter's v7 that satisfies him
      v13 from Mike Pluke: drops "database" from the set of examples, and
      follow's Gregg's approach with the conditional "because those files
      are part of software... they are covered by WCAG2ICT"
      v14 from Gregg Vanderheiden (which is chronologically earlier, but I
      suspect due to e-mail crossing may be "later" than Mike's): drops
      "database" from the set of examples (like Mike's) and also rewrites
      the first sentence to add in "software creator" authorship; keeps the
      same second sentence "because those files are part of software" as
      above.


I suggest that all further edits occur on this wiki page, with a note as to
which earlier variant they are an edit of, and how they are an edit (visual
change tracking of some sort).  I think that may help us all comprehend
what each is proposing.



With that out of the way, here are my thoughts:
   1. For somewhat obvious reasons, I'm not thrilled with dropping
      "database" from the examples.  They are a very important file type,
      and I believe they will too easily be confused by folks as being
      documents.  I want to see "databases" included in the list of
      examples.

   2. From variant 9 onward (last ~36 hours of proposals from Gregg &
      Mike), the second sentence introduces a conditional, and all variants
      of this conditional appear to be some iteration of: "Because those
      files are just part of the software...'sensory experience to be
      communicated to the user' from such files... is covered by WCAG2ICT
      like any other parts of the software".  I think doing this as a
      conditional is a mistake.  It doesn't matter who created those files
      (a concept Gregg's variant 14 introduces).  It doesn't matter if
      embedded in those files (e.g. embedded in a database) is a document.
      All that matters is that 'sensory experience to be communicated to
      the user' in such files is clearly covered by WCAG2ICT, based on what
      it is when the user interacts with it.  If that 'sensory experience
      to be communicated to the user' is expressed solely in the software
      UI, it is covered by the software aspect of WCAG2ICT.  If instead
      that 'sensory experience to be communicated to the user' in such
      files is an embedded document that gets extracted from such a file,
      upon extraction it is a document and is covered by the document
      aspect of WCAG2ICT (it was also a document when it was inserted into
      that file).  Therefore I think the conditional is a mistake and we
      shouldn't have that in our text.

   3. Gregg's variant 14 further limits the examples of the first sentence
      based on "software creator intent", which adds a lot of ambiguity to
      the note (how do we discern that these files "are intended to only
      server as part of software"? - ask the author about this for each and
      every file that accompanies some software?).  I think this is a big
      mistake and we should avoid that approach.



I have just added variant #15 to the wiki page.  It starts with the
"variant 7/8" first sentence, listing the set of example files without any
conditionals or "software creator intent", and it includes databases.  I
marry this in the second sentence with the Mike/Gregg latest variant that
the "information and sensory experience to be communicated to the user"
from such files, is just another part of the content that occurs in
software and is covered by WCAG2ICT like any other parts of the software.
Finally I add a new sentence of my own designed to directly address David's
concerns: IN RARE CASES, THE RETRIEVED CONTENT IS AN EMBEDDED DOCUMENT, AND
SHOULD THAT OCCUR, IT BECOMES A DOCUMENT ONCE EXTRACTED.


This new sentence not only covers the database case, but also the virtual
machine hard drive file, etc.  It covers "user-generated" content as well
as "software creator content" (and covers this no matter what the "intent"
of the author of the content was).


Here is the fully proposal/variant #15:


      (New) Note 3: Software configuration and storage files such as
      databases and virus definitions, as well as computer instruction
      files such as source code, batch/script files, and firmware, are
      examples of files that function as part of software and thus are not
      examples of documents.  If and where software retrieves "information
      and sensory experience to be communicated to the user" from such
      files, is just another part of the content that occurs in software
      and is covered by WCAG2ICT like any other parts of the software. IN
      RARE CASES, THE RETRIEVED CONTENT IS AN EMBEDDED DOCUMENT, AND SHOULD
      THAT OCCUR, IT BECOMES A DOCUMENT ONCE EXTRACTED.



How does this work for everyone?  I would very much appreciate it if
responders would do two things:
   1. Append any new variants you propose to the bottom of New Note 3 for
      definition of "document", noting who you are, what variant your new
      proposal is derived from, and how it is different.
   2. Offer in e-mail your critique of my proposal #15 (if you "can't live
      with it"), so I can understand why you reject it and what your
      counter-proposal is trying to achieve relative to what I proposed.  I
      hope I managed to do that in this e-mail...



Regards,



Peter


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Peter Korn | Accessibility Principal
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