Re: ATAG requirements on accessible authoring interfaces

Jan, thanks for the full context and Success Criteria.  But I guess I 
still don't understand Roberto's comment about it being difficult or 
impossible for web based tools.

Another question: Is it possible to meet the success criteria with a 
combination of both the authoring tool and the operating environment 
settings?  For example, suppose the authoring tool respects the operating 
environment settings and therefore inherits the larger menu bar, tool bar 
icons, scroll bars, etc., but doesn't enlarge the content, but does 
provide a zoom and contrast feature separately.  I would think that the 
combination of authoring tool features & os features meet the criteria and 
more importantly allow the user with the vision impairment to successfully 
get the editing job done.

does success criteria (b) need and "and/or", or is the "or" sufficient?
* (b) using either the authoring tool and/or via the ...

And does the (c) range need to be "the same as", or "at least as good" of 
a range?  For example, zoom ranges provided by browsers may be "better" in 
that they are larger than the font enlargement settings provided by the 
Windows operating environment settings.

Regards,
Phill Jenkins




Jan Richards <jan.richards@utoronto.ca> 
04/25/2005 01:21 PM

To
Phill Jenkins/Austin/IBM@IBMUS
cc
w3c-wai-au@w3.org
Subject
Re: ATAG requirements on accessible authoring interfaces






Hi Phill,

Just to be clear, here is the complete proposed checkpoint:

---

FROM_UAAG.5 Ensure that visual displays are configurable. [Priority 1] 
[Adapted from UAAG 4.1, 4.2, 4.3]

Rationale: Authors with low vision may require that text be rendered at 
a size larger than the size specified by the authoring tool's defaults. 
authors with color blindness may need to impose or prevent certain color 
combinations.

Techniques:

Success Criteria:

1. The author must be able to configure all text (size, font family, and 
foreground/background color) and the non-text objects (size, color):
* (a) for the entire authoring interface (including content within 
editing views),
* (b) using either the authoring tool or via the operating environment 
settings,
* (c) in a range that is the same as that available in the operating 
environment settings.

---

So the idea here is that even though Zoomtext, etc. do a great job for 
many people, some amount of built-in configurability is still desirable. 
Success criteria (c) sets the range of configurability to be the same as 
that available in the operating environment (e.g. the Windows Display 
settings). In other words, a client-side authoring tool would meet this 
checkpoint by respecting the display settings of the operating system. A 
Web-based tool would meet the settings by respecting the browser display 
settings (which the browser may in turn have passed through from 
operating system settings).

I hope this helps.

Cheers,
Jan





Roberto Scano - IWA/HWG wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Phill Jenkins" <pjenkins@us.ibm.com>
> To: "Roberto Scano - IWA/HWG" <rscano@iwa-italy.org>
> Cc: "Jan Richards" <jan.richards@utoronto.ca>; <jongund@uiuc.edu>; 
> <w3c-wai-au@w3.org>
> Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 7:21 PM
> Subject: Re: ATAG requirements on accessible authoring interfaces
> 
> 
> Impossible? Isn't this the responsibility of the assistive technology?
> ZoomText and Majic are just a few of the magnifiers that handle this all
> the time.  The "chrome" of the browser also has some of the 
> responsibility
> - for example the zoom feature in the browsers.  The point here is that
> the client is doing the magnification, not the server that is sending 
> the
> HTML in a Web based authoring tool.  Another point here - the 
> requirement
> or need of authors with low vision is valid, but the placement of the
> responsibility of the solution on the authoring tool vendor is not, in 
> my
> opinion, correct or most efficient.  That is the role of the assistive
> technology.  Only the enablement of the authoring tool to not prevent 
> the
> use of magnifiers and zoom features is required here.
> 
> Roberto Scano:
> I think this is not responsability of the assistive tecnology: ATAG 
> refer to the authoring tools (web or "client side"). 
> 
> 

-- 
Jan Richards, M.Sc.
User Interface Design Specialist
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre (ATRC), University of Toronto

   Email: jan.richards@utoronto.ca
   Web:   http://jan.atrc.utoronto.ca
   Phone: 416-946-7060
   Fax:   416-971-2896