Re: FAQ

comments inline - CMN

On Sun, 16 Dec 2001, Emmanuelle Gutiérrez y Restrepo wrote:

  I suggest the following changes:

  1.- In:
  "Why are these guidelines necessary?
  Many of today's authoring tools are difficult to use and/or they create
  content that is difficult to access for people with disabilities. ..."

CMN I agree

  2.- In:
  "Do authors have to use conformant tools to create accessible Web pages?

  It is possible to create accessible Web pages with non-conformant tools, by
  using either a text editor, WYSIWYG, or other editor, and directly applying
  the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 while creating the page. This
  may involve more steps than if using a conformant tool, for instance going
  into the source code to ensure that the tool is generating valid code, or
  performing steps manually to check the accessibility of a page. For authors

  who are less familiar with <insert>the markup languages and/or </insert> the

  Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, authoring tools that conform to
  ATAG 1.0 may significantly facilitate production of accessible Web sites."

CMN I disagree on this point. There are some tools that will help a user who
is not familiar with markup langauges, such as WYSIWYG tools. But
tools that conform to ATAG need not help a user who is not familiar with HTML
to learn HTML. For example, a code-editing tool does not need to provide an
HTML tutorial to conform, although it does need to explain what to do to
make the result accessible. I don't think that's enough help to justify the
claim.

  3.- In:
  ...be easy or difficult to use?

  I believe that the fact that a tool supports ATAG affects its ease of use.
  For example, the alternative texts of the buttons can help many people to
  use the tool.

CMN I do agree with this. The existing text:

Authoring tools are easy or difficult to use according to the level of user
experience they presume. The fact that a tool supports ATAG 1.0 should not
directly affect its ease of use, with the exception that when authoring
accessible pages, an ATAG-conformant tool would be easier to use than a
similar tool that was not ATAG-conformant since the first tool would automate
some steps involved in making a Web page accessible.

My proposal:

Authoring tools are easy or difficult to use for different users based on
differences in their interfaces. ATAG requires that tools make producing
accessible content one of the easiest things to do with the tool, and
requires that the tool has certain features to ensure that it can be used by
people with disabilities. This will have some effect on the overall
ease-of-use for some tools. But ATAG does not require fundamental changes to
the user interface of tools, so there will still be differences in tools, to
suit different types of user.

cheers

Chaals

  Kind regards,
  Emmanuelle



-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  phone: +61 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative     http://www.w3.org/WAI    fax: +1 617 258 5999
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Received on Sunday, 16 December 2001 21:24:17 UTC