- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 19:34:24 -0500 (EST)
- To: Charles Oppermann <chuckop@MICROSOFT.com>
- cc: WAI AU Guidelines <w3c-wai-au@w3.org>
Chuck, In a series of messages to the group in the last two weeks you describe (as far as I can tell) the process the group works by, and then you claim that the group has some other, fundamentally flawed process. I suggest that if you listen to what happens in meetings and read the background materials (minutes, agendas, list archives, etc) more carefully you will find the process is pretty much what you claim we need. If you have material suggestions to offer, please provide them through the list, so they can be discussed in that forum, and thus dealt with efficiently in the limited time available for teleconferences. In the case in point - the need for navigation of structure, I refer you yet again to the minutes of the face to face meeting where it was discussed briefly, and a placeholder was left for further discussion, to the explanations given to you during the teleconference, and to the discussion of the problem on the list. If you have in fact read all that material, and the problem is still not clear, let me know and I will ensure that a very simple and straightforward description of the problem, which you find clear and comprehensible, is furnished. (I would also refer you to the work done by Microsoft in the development of such features for products which are designed to manipulate documents - I assume that there is material which is internally available.) If on the other hand you feel that the current process is so flawed that the group is moving backwards, and the working drafts are successively worse, rather than successive improvements, please point out to us where the problems are most serious, again via the list, for the same reaasons outlined above. In the email quoted below you are asking for all solutions to go into the document, yet time and again you claim that we should not just be throwing things in willy-nilly since a large document is less likely to be read. See for example the last paragraph of your message yesterday - http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-au/1999JanMar/0210 I find it very difficult to understand what you feel is wrong. It seems the point is so subtle as to require seemingly infinite discussion, with negligible practical impact on the workings of the group, except that it has the unfortunate side effect of removing some of our focus from our actual goals. If there is a serious problem then this is important. But if not then it is consuming an excessive amount of the group's time and energy. Charles McCN On Wed, 10 Mar 1999, Charles Oppermann wrote: [snip] I'm trying to show that the process for developing checkpoints is flawed, not to eliminate this or any other existing checkpoint. All ideas are valid. If someone says they need a structure view of the document, web site, Intranet, or the Universe, that's fine with me. Tell me why you need it (i.e.: what problem are you currently having that this feature solves) and then let's brainstorm on this feature and some other ways of solving the problem. All those solutions should go into the document. -----Original Message----- From: Charles McCathieNevile [mailto:charles@w3.org] Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 1999 6:12 PM To: Charles Oppermann Cc: WAI AU Guidelines Subject: Structure navigation within a document, re: Development Cost These comments, and therefore my responses, seem only to address the case of navigiation within a single document, not of navigating a series of related documents. On Tue, 9 Mar 1999, Charles Oppermann wrote: [snip] * It only helps document creators and editors, not users of the finished web site CMN: This is true. One of the two goals of the group is to describe how to do just that. It is in the context of what is necessary to help creators and editors of the documents that the priority of this particular feature should be assessed. CO: * It only helps those document editors using speech output. It is of little help to users with mobility impairments or low vision people using screen magnifiers. CMN: Actually the ability to navigate a structured tree, rather than having to work through a document in its complete form, is of specific benefit to people who have mobility impairments, for precisely the same reason - it enables the document to be traversed with much less work. In the case of magnified screens (and users with various types of cognitive disability) it is the ability to work with an overview of a document CO: * The degree that it helps those users is unknown and debatable CMN: While we could debate at great length the precise degree to which it helps, and while I expect in the course of our work on these guidelines to debate this and to refine our understanding, it seems that there is clearly value to accessibility. We have heard, as we could also deduce from a little thought, that the value is related to the complexity of the material produced. About which more after CO: * It's only meaningful in the cases where structure is important. The feature would make little sense in products such as Microsoft Access, Excel or Project. * The feature already exists in Microsoft Word. Does it need to be duplicated in FrontPage? CMN: Essentially, that depends on whether Microsoft regards Frontpage as a tool suitable for creating a structured document, or really only worth using for trivial pages. (Whether resources are available to justify its inclusion in these tools is a separate issue to whether there is a reason to put it there in the first place). --Charles McCathieNevile mailto:charles@w3.org phone: +1 617 258 0992 http://www.w3.org/People/Charles W3C Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI MIT/LCS - 545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139, USA
Received on Wednesday, 10 March 1999 19:34:27 UTC