Re: Comments on Guidelines 2.3 and 2.4 of 17 June AU Guidelines

  my comments interspersed - look for IJ and CMN
  
  On Sat, 19 Jun 1999, Ian Jacobs wrote:
  
    Reference document:
         http://www.w3.org/WAI/AU/WAI-AUTOOLS-19990617     
    
    3) Guideline 2.4: In intro text, rather than say
       that text equivalents are "absolutely necessary", just
       explain why they are important: they may be rendered
       as speech, braille, and visually. Change the second
       sentence to read something like "Since producing
       text equivalents can be a time-consuming task..." and
       then merge with the second paragraph. For example:
    
       "Textual equivalents, including "alt-text", long 
        descriptions, video captions, and transcripts make
        multimedia content accessible since text may be
        rendered as speech, braille, and visually. [Add
        more rationale here if desired, stealing from
        WCAG.] Since producing text equivalents can be a
        time-consuming task, authoring tools should
        assist the author with mechanical tasks (such as?)
        and help the author ensure that text equivalents
        accurately convey the functionality of
        the related multimedia object.
    
    4) Drop "This will lead to an increase in the
       average quality of descriptions used." I don't think
       this prediction is necessary, in particular because
       just before it there are four good reasons to include
       pre-written descriptions. What does "average quality"
       mean?

And On Mon, 21 Jun 1999, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:

  I agree with your principles here. I will leave it for this draft,
  because I think the point raised by WIlliam that it might be worthwhile
  discussing the use of non-text alternatives is also valid, and I think we
  should wait at least to see what the WCAG group comes up with on those lines
  this thursday.
  
CMN
  I propose that we make the changes as proposed, in the next working draft.

Received on Thursday, 24 June 1999 19:09:49 UTC