accessible tool

JG:: "I think that trying to develop specific guidelines that work
across all plateforms is beyond the resources and the scope of the
working group."

WL: This is presented in a context with the notion of making authoring
tools accessible to authors.  Except for Checkpoint 1.1 the
recommendations are not platform-specific and are very commonsensical.
The idea that the tools should conform to the accessibility guidelines
peculiar to the platform for which they are designed isn't particularly
controversial, albeit somewhat hard to specify.  If checkpoint 1.1 is
essentially moved into the introductory material of guideline 1 and the
techniques are pointers to widely accepted principles of Universal
Design, the point will have the same effect as long as the developers
are interested in making accessible products.  Will this provide an
"objective" checkable (prioritizable?) item to check off?  How will this
affect conformance level? I dunno, but if it comes down to defending a
particular implementation, it should be fairly clear if the intent is
sincere.  The parts about documentation, help files, editability of and
by structure have no problem with platform specificity so I think if we
put checkpoint 1.1 aside as a "priority anything" object, we can get on
with what we intend (and are chartered) to do.  In other words, it is
hard to understand how this is "beyond our scope" - as to "resources" I
totally disagree that we are insufficiently resourceful to provide
guidance to developers in matters of making authoring tools accessible.

-- 
Love.
            ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE
http://dicomp.pair.com

Received on Friday, 2 July 1999 22:15:11 UTC