Re: please review and comment

aloha, y'all!

i whole-heartedly concur with the sentiment expressed in the last paragraph of
bill loughburough's reply to jutta's call for review and comment on phil's
proposed verbiage to address the relationship of the expected experiential
level of an author and ATAG

quote
there is obfuscation caused by proliferation of endlessly growing volume of
explanatory material designed to answer the almost infinite possible extensible
questioning of every possible interpretation of each phrase used in making the 
document try to play to the widest possible audience of those who care to raise
comparatively trivial issues  concerning...(well, you get the idea!).
unquote

and not just because it reads as if he's been using my seldom referenced work,
six easy steps to torturous syntax, but because i do not think it the role of
the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group to lower priority
levels based upon the quote skill level unquote of a hypothetical author... 

one of the goals of ATAG is to ensure that accessible content can be created by
authors with a wide variety of skill levels -- whether or not an individual
author has experience using a particular tool or a specific markup language
does not materially affect the user's need to be guided, assisted, prompted,
and encouraged to create accessible content  -- the means, yes, but not the
underlying need, which is what we have attempted to address in drafting these
guidelines in the first place...

the other goal of ATAG is to ensure that users with quote disabilities unquote
will be able to use such tools to create accessible content _themselves_ -- now
_that_ is a class of users which i would (to borrow bruce's phrase)
characterize as quote highly motivated unquote

priorities are priorities, and it is _our_ priority to ensure that the broadest
possible spectrum of authors (and _poetential_ authors) be given the
opportunity to create content for the web that is accessible...  let individual
developers decide to whom they wish to tailor their tools, but do not ask us to
dilute ATAG by lowering prorities for the quote skilled unquote user... 

gregory
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He that lives on Hope, dies farting
     -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1763
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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 Friday, 10 December 1999 02:33:56 UTC