Re: Guideline 2.1 proposals

TRACE, ATRC, IBM, American Foundation for the Blind, are all members of the
group, and publish extensively in the field. My review of the area over the
last two weeks suggests that IBM, Microsoft, EITAAC, and Sun have all relied
extensively on the work of TRACE. (As an historian, an important part of my
expertise is looking at documents and determining what the dependencies are.
It was an interesting exercise in this case.) Although I doubt that any one
member of the group has sufficient expertise to create this information from
nothing, I think the required expertise and the necessary background
information are in fact readily available within working group. Part of that
expertise is an understanding of what information a developer needs, and how
best to present it. Your (Bruce's) expertise in that particular area is an
important ingredient.

I haven't come up with this information because I am some kind of genius. The
checkpoints as I have proposed are those which seem, after discussion and
reflection, to provide the necessary information for what must be done. The
techniques I have collected and proposed are based on careful review of the
following documents:

    "Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines" available at:

    http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/mac/HIGuidelines/HIGuidelines-2.html[1]

    "Requirements for Accessible Software Design" US Department of Education,
    version 1.1 March 6, 1997. Available at:

    http://ocfo.ed.gov/coninfo/clibrary/software.htm[2].

    "EITACC Desktop Software standards" Electronic Information Technology
    Access Advisory (EITACC) Committee. Available at:

    trace.wisc.edu/docs/eitacc_desktop_software_standards/desktop_software_standards.htm[3]

    "Software Accessibility" IBM Special Needs Systems. Available at:

    http://www.austin.ibm.com/sns/accesssoftware.html[4]

    "MS checklist" available at:

    http://www.microsoft.com/enable/dev/apps.htm[5]

    "Designing for Accessibility" Eric Bergman and Earl Johnson. Available at:

    http://www.sun.com/tech/access/software.guides.html[6]

    "Towards Accessible Human-Computer Interaction" Eric Bergman, Earl
    Johnson, Sun Microsytems 1995. A substantial paper, with a valuable print
    bibliography. Available at:

    http://www.sun.com/tech/access/updt.HCI.advance.html[7].

    "Accessibility quick reference guide" Sun Microsystems. Not as useful as
    [SUN-DESIGN][8]. Available at:

    http://www.sun.com/tech/access/software.guides.html[9]

    "Application Software Design Guidelines" compiled by G. Vanderheiden. A
    thorough reference work. Available at:

    http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/software_guidelines/software.htm[10]

    "User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (Working Draft)" J. Gunderson, I.
    Jacobs eds. This is a work in progress, and the latest working draft is
    available at:

    http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-USERAGENT[11]

    "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" W. Chisholm, I. Jacobs, C.
    LeTourneau, G. Vanderheiden eds. Guidelines for accessible web content,
    available at:

    http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT[12]

    "What is Accessible Software" James W. Thatcher, Ph.D., IBM, 1997. This
    paper gives a short example-based introduction to the difference between
    software which is accessible, and software which can be used by some
    assitive technologies. Available at

    http://www.austin.ibm.com/sns/software.html[13].

Charles McCN

On Wed, 2 Jun 1999 Bruce_Roberts/CAM/Lotus@lotus.com wrote:

       I'm still uncomfortable with having multiple tool accessibility
  checkpoints.  I'm O.K. (marginally) with the checkpoint for following the
  operating system standards with a large list of techniques behind it.  Beyond
  that, I would like to be convinced that this group has the correct expertise and
  can spend the appropriate time to define other UI accessiblity requirements.  I
  know I don't have that expertise or the time.  Can other folks speak to this?
  
  -- Bruce

Received on Wednesday, 2 June 1999 15:34:41 UTC