Re: Merging or Splitting Sections

At 03:45 PM 5/11/1999 -0700, William Loughborough wrote:
>[...] if we separate, or divide on the basis of
>author/user we err on the side of exclusion.  I am not yet swayed from
>the notion of oneness in our guideline set. 

I'm with William on this one, I think that arbitrary separation
into sections will hurt us overall.  I think people are smart
enough to figure out what different sections mean.

But, out of curiousity, is there any reason that we have the
accessibility of content created listed BEFORE the accessibility
of the tool?  The current division implies, without possibly
meaning to, a level of priority.  I think "produce accessible
code" is the "expected" guideline, and thus it may actually be
productive to put that _after_ the guidelines on "make this tool
usable by a broad audience."

The reason for this is the "cold water in your face" argument.
To many people the most surprising thing may be "how to make
this tool work for these folks" not "make valid HTML" (which
is what the WAI has been saying all along -- you could sum up
the "obvious" guideline for this group with "follow the WCAG
with respect to code you create.")

Giving emphasis to the non-intuitive is always good as it
breeds a sense of surprise and "learning something new."
Starting with the obvious may be _too_ obvious and expected.

So my suggestions are:

* Lose the distinctions between section 2 and section 3
* Number the guidelines 1 to N
* Put the accessibility-of-the-tool guidelines FIRST


--
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/>

Received on Tuesday, 11 May 1999 19:00:16 UTC