re: Minutes of 17 August AUWG Teleconference

Here is my actions from last week's call (ACTION: JR to fix is->are in 
B.2.4.3; ACTION: JR to incorporate these B.2.4 ideas into new tech 
wording proposal):

SUCCESS CRITERION:
B.2.4.3 Let user agents repair: After the end of an *authoring session*, 
the *authoring tool* does not attempt to *repair* *alternative content* 
for non-text content using any text values that are equally available to 
*user agents* (e.g., the filename is not used). (Level A)

TECHNIQUES: INTENT:
The intent of this success criterion is to address situations in which 
an author has either not noticed or ignored opportunities for adding 
alternative content and has closed their "authoring session". ATAG 2.0 
does *not* require authoring tools to attempt automated repairs in this 
situation because doing so risks misleading accessibility checking tools 
and end users into the assumption that the alternative content was 
provide or approved by a human author. However, if developers are 
interested in providing automation to assist end users, this success 
criterion acts as a guide. Basically, the success criterion assumes that 
basic repairs (e.g., using text content that is readily available to 
user agents, such as the file name, text metadata within non-text 
objects, the tile of a linked resource, etc.) are best left to user 
agents and assistive technologies, since they can more clear about the 
fact that the alternative content results from an automatic repair, 
rather from a human author. However, in some cases the authoring tool 
will have text information, such as contextual information (e.g., the 
image is the author's profile picture) that the user agent does not have 
equal access to, in which case, the repair can be made by the authoring 
tool. In addition, the success criterion does not limit more technically 
sophisticated repairs that go beyond simple text processing to 
processing images, audio or video. The intent here is encourage, rather 
discourage progress in these rapidly advancing areas.
Note: When web content technologies include a mechanism for marking text 
alternatives as automatically generated, these mechanisms should be 
employed. Also, because these automatic repairs are, by their nature, 
second-best measures taken only when authors are no longer available, it 
would be preferable for the instances of automated repairs to be flagged 
for author attention in any subsequent authoring sessions.

Received on Monday, 24 August 2009 19:45:47 UTC