Re: New draft - please review

aloha, kynn!

and i always thought that the reason one turned numbered links on in lynx was
in order to discern the embedded links...

i suppose that that is the advantage of serial surfing -- when i am listening
to a page, and i hear a link that is obviously explanatory, i hit the squelch
speech key and follow the link...  as a matter of fact, that's one of the
reasons why lynx has always been my favorite browser -- it has always been
extremely good at preserving your point-of-regard as you reverse your path,
making it possible to jump back and forth between related resources... perhaps
i developed that habit because the first browser to which i was exposed was
lynx -- 2.3b to be precise...

or, maybe it has something to do with being a professionally trained
medievalist...

in any event, i always thought that embedded links are the life's blood of a
hypertext -- they are what puts the hyper in hypertext, as far as i'm concerned
-- take a listen to any of my pages, and you'll find them all rife with
embedded links...  it really really troubles me to think that all of the
information that those embedded links contain is being bypassed by so many web
surfers...  i wonder if you did a comparative study of blind users and sighted
users, if the blind users who relied on speech would have a higher incidence of
following embedded links than their sighted counterparts...  based on the
majority of comments that i've received from blind surfers, i'd think that
(due, again, perhaps, to early exposure to lynx) they would...

kynn, i agree that we need a strong statement about the accessibility of help
and documentation,which is why i proposed the addition to the introductory text
for Guideline 7...  what other choice have we?  any discussion of accessible
help has to link not only to proposed techniques, but to specific resources,
located off-site, over which the W3C has no control, nor assurance that they
will still be there the next time someone attempts to access them...  so, i've
come to the conclusion that checkpoint 7.1 covers the sun and the moon, and
since no one has yet disabused me of this delusion, i'm running with it...

a strong statement in the intro which links to our sister documents sends a
strong message -- whether anyone bothers to receive that message or not is
beyond our control, but -- at the very least -- the message has been clearly
sent...

gregory 

At 04:44 PM 10/18/99 -0700, Kynn wrote:
>At 04:33 PM 10/18/1999 , Gregory J. Rosmaita wrote:
>>i don't think that the phrase "crucial information" is the red herring, so 
>much
>>as the concern that no one will follow the hyperlinks to the referenced
>>documents, upon which the Techniques for 7.1 rely so heavily...
>
>Yes, my main concern is hiding information behind a hyperlink.
>
>>i, optimistically, perchance, am placing my faith in the simple fact that,
>>since developers will have to follow a bunch of links in order to understand
>>just what the hell 7.1 means, they will follow the links to WCAG and UAAG,
>>which i belive should be given prominence through an addition to the
>>introduction to GL7 
>
>You are a man of greater faith than I am, friend Gregory. :)  As
>a web designer, I view non-linear hyperlinks as things that will
>NOT be read most of the time.  (By linear, I mean "next..." at 
>the bottom of a page; you can be fairly certain that many people
>will go on to the "next" document if they finish with the current
>one, but links in the middle of a web site will often be thought
>of as "optional" and thus may be skipped, even if it COMPLETELY
>OBVIOUS to the web designer that they will get NO VALUE WHATSOEVER
>from the current document without following the hyperlink, and
>then returning.)
>
>Of course, this standards process should not necessarily be driven
>by we of little faith, and I defer to the rest of you if you
>think it's not an important issue.
>
>-- 
>Kynn Bartlett                                    mailto:kynn@hwg.org
>President, HTML Writers Guild                    http://www.hwg.org/
>AWARE Center Director                          http://aware.hwg.org/
>

--------------------------------------------------------
He that lives on Hope, dies farting
     -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1763
--------------------------------------------------------
Gregory J. Rosmaita <unagi69@concentric.net>
   WebMaster and Minister of Propaganda, VICUG NYC
        <http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/vicug/index.html>
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Received on Monday, 18 October 1999 23:04:46 UTC