comments on 12 November draft - priorities and principles

Hi,

Just a few general comments about the 12 November draft.  In a quick skim
of the archive and issue list I did not find any discussion about the
current priority language nor the guiding principles.  If I have missed a
thread, I apologize. 

Priorities - It might be hard to distinguish the impact/severity of the
priorities with the current language (P1=fundamental, P2=important,
P3=promotes).  A clear definition of the usage of the terms or more
definitive language might make it easier,  e.g., the UA and GL use the
common "must, should, may" structure.   Changes in the language might cause
the priority of some items to be reevaluated.

In the authoring guidelines, a few items have conditional priorities.  For
example,  we have defined the term "important" to refer to "information
that is necessary for understanding."  There are a few items in the AU
guidelines (such as technique 2.5.4) that, depending on the importance of
the information, might also be conditional.

Also in regards to priorities, both the UA and GL have dropped priorities
from guidelines and only use them on techniques (or checkpoints as we're
calling them in GL).  For more information about these discussions see the
thread on the GL list called "Removing priorities from guidelines" started
by Gregg Vanderheiden on 17 November (available at
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/1998OctDec/0220.html).
Something to consider.  

Priorities are currently missing from guidelines 2.8 and 3.3.  

"Guiding Principles" are sprinkled throughout the document.  Perhaps these
ought to be elaborated into section introductions or as themes for the
document in the abstract?

--wendy
wendy chisholm
human factors engineer
trace research and development center
university of wisconsin - madison, USA

Received on Monday, 4 January 1999 16:55:50 UTC