Re: check/identify

I have noted in the intro to guideline 4 that things should be done
automatically _where possible_, but I think the checkpoint is the proper
place to say what the checkpoint means. (I will have a draft out later today
my time).

A text editor can get a long way towards compliance. And many popular tools
are just text editors with a few neat features grafted on. It is a question
of having enough neat features added to meet the requirements. I am intrigued
by how much emacs would need modified - perhaps not a lot, although I haven't
looked in detail at the help. It is certainly an example of a tool that
requires a relatively sophisticated user.

Charles

Charles McCN

On Wed, 1 Dec 1999, William Loughborough wrote:

  In the introductory paragraphs to Guideline 4: "To ensure accessibility,
  authoring tools must be designed so that they can automatically identify
  inaccessible markup" might be the crux of the matter we've been
  contending over. If it is impossible (at this time) to do this then we
  must change this language. Checkpoint 4.1 is clearly based on the
  assumption that such an identification of inaccessible markup is
  possible and frankly I doubt this is the case. The fact that the Note:
  to 4.1 acknowledges this makes it IMHO imperative that the intro to this
  guideline is the proper place to make the point made in the note. I
  strongly disagree with the notion that what can/cannot be automatically
  identified should be listed anywhere in the Guideline Document. 
  
  This same deplorable state of affairs may occur in other
  Guidelines/Checkpoints because we were a bit cavalier in our use of such
  phraseology as "check for" and other actions to take in regard to
  inaccessible markup. 
  
  If the "minimum" is alerting the author to accessibility problems then I
  still feel that a copy of WCAG furnished with a text editor can qualify
  at some level and with proper instruction in the design of extensions to
  the tool's capabilities with macros it might even proceed to triple-A!
  
  How much would Raman's emacspeak need to be modified to qualify?
  -- 
  Love.
              ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE
  http://dicomp.pair.com
  

--Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org  phone: +61 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                    http://www.w3.org/WAI
21 Mitchell Street, Footscray, VIC 3011,  Australia (I've moved!)

Received on Wednesday, 1 December 1999 21:32:31 UTC