Re: Section 2.5 - was Re: Priority Definitions for Sections 2 and 3

Sorry, I was a bit opaque there.

What I meant was that my grandmother's abilit to produce accessible pages is
addressed in other guidelines. 2.7 really only deals with her when she wants
to learn something.

If a clueless author wants to remain clueless they will avoid all manner of
help, and guideline 2.7 will not influence their lives at all.

And I absolutely agree that we will not solve the problem until accessibility
is recognised as being an ordinary technical problem to be solved, like
getting images to display or getting a browser to parse legitimate code. So
long as it is an optional extra, people may not take the option.

Charles McCN

On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, Kynn Bartlett wrote:

  At 07:38 p.m. 04/21/99 -0400, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
  >We already address that question in general. 
  
  >2.7.1 addresses the requirement that a clueless author can learn how to make
  >an accessible page.
  
  No, that says they _can learn_.  That isn't the same as solving the
  clueless author problem.
  
  I want a WYSIWYG program that produces accessible output with no
  learning curve.  No explanations of accessibility.  I want my mom
  to be able to generate an accessible web page without even knowing
  that blind users exist.  That's what the tool should be doing, and
  if we can solve that problem, we've solved the biggest one, IMNSHO.
  
  Documenting accessibility practices doesn't solve that problem.  It's
  not a checkpoint under one guideline, it's the goal of the whole
  document -- or it should be, at least.
  
  >2.7.2 addresses the requirement that it is a simple thing
  >for them to do.
  
  Uh, no, that doesn't do that either.
  
  Remember, the clueless user should be allowed to REMAIN clueless
  and STILL produce a usable, accessible web page.  The authoring tool
  does NOT have to teach them accessibility as long as the authoring
  tool creates accessible web pages anyway!
  
  --
  Kynn Bartlett <kynn@hwg.org>
  President, Governing Board Member
  HTML Writers Guild <URL:http://www.hwg.org>
  Director, Accessible Web Authoring Resources and Education Center
    <URL:http://aware.hwg.org/>
  

--Charles McCathieNevile            mailto:charles@w3.org
phone: +1 617 258 0992   http://www.w3.org/People/Charles
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative    http://www.w3.org/WAI
MIT/LCS  -  545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139,  USA

Received on Wednesday, 21 April 1999 23:21:30 UTC