Satisfying 3.4

ISSUE: On the June 11, 2001 teleconference Marjolein asked whether
Homesite's ability to save snippets of code for later re-use constitutes
compliance with ATAG checkpoint 3.4, since the snippets that it saves
could save the necessary associations. Charles thinks it does, but I
disagreed. Here's why:

The Homesite feature, in question, does allow alternative equivalents to
be "edited" and "reused" as the checkpoint requires. However, plain text
editors can also save and retrieve chunks of markup to separate files.
The key to this checkpoint is the term "managing". Since this term could
mean many different things, it is best to look at the techniques that
were written for the checkpoint (was 3.5). The primary technique is to:

"Maintain a database registry that associates object identity
information with alternative information. Whenever an object is used and
an equivalent alternative is provided, ask the author whether they want
to add the object (or identifying information) and the alternative
information to the database....."

This technique is quite different from a system that simply allows the
user to save and re-use their own markup encoded associations, because
the tool maintains the database automatically (without the user having
to know that these equivalents are important).

The second technique (after the reference) asks tools to:

"Suggest pre-written descriptions as default text whenever one of the
associated files is inserted into the author's document."

This means that the system should prompt the author rather than relying
on them to remember to use the associations they have previously saved.

It, therefore, seems to me that the Homesite feature is not sufficiently
in line with the techniques to meet the checkpoint.

-- 
Cheers,
Jan

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Jan Richards
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre (ATRC)
University of Toronto

jan.richards@utoronto.ca
Tel: (416) 946-7060  Fax: (416) 971-2896

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Received on Monday, 11 June 2001 15:46:10 UTC