Multimedia tools bullet in Scope section (1.1)

During our conference call 6/16/99 I had some comments on 1.1 -- Scope of
these Guidelines and was asked to post them.

The intro of the section says:

"These guidelines are intended to be used by developers of all tools used to
produce content for the Web. These include:"

The fourth bullet says:

"Tools that produce multimedia, especially where it is intended for use on
the Web (e.g., video production and editing suites);"

Specifically, I am concerned that the wording of this bullet extends the
scope to applications that aren't in our purview, such as Paint or an image
editor.

I can understand that it makes sense to include applications such as video
editors that produce content which can be more or less be "plugged into" a
Web page. There may be little opportunity for the page author to use the
authoring tool to enhance/ensure the accessibility of that content. So, it
makes sense for the guidelines to include the tool that produces the
content.

However, it's generally different with multimedia content such as JPEG or
GIF images. An author can add ALT text, and so on, with the page authoring
tool.

I suggest we add language so that the bullet specifically applies to content
that is little affected by authoring tools.

I think Wendy had some good suggestions as the wording, possibly including
"standalone."

Dick Brown
User Assistance Manager for Accessibility -- Microsoft

Received on Friday, 18 June 1999 18:46:48 UTC