Re: Decision Support in ATAG

Hi all,

I just wanted to let people know I'm still trying to figure out out to 
word accessibility support (B.2.1.X Decision Support) in a testable way.

One possibility might be to limit the scope to problems inherent with 
the content being inserted - not more holistic problems caused when the 
content is inserted (which would be better handled by a checker).

And I'd also like to continue our practice of not dictating any 
particular workflow.

If anyone has ideas, it would be great to hear them.

Cheers,
Jan











Jutta Treviranus wrote:
> In reviewing the state of Guideline B at the moment I have one concern, 
> we seem to have lost one important form of support for creating 
> accessible content.
> 
> Originally we had the following abstract principles in part B:
> 1) if the tool makes decisions for the author, make sure those decisions 
> are accessible ones (automatic processes, automatically generated 
> content, etc.)
> 2) provide guidance, information and support to enable the author to 
> make *initial* decisions that lead to accessible content
> 3) enable the author to check that the content is accessible
> 4) enable the author to repair any content that is found not to be 
> accessible
> 5) make sure that this support is well integrated into the user 
> experience including the work flow
> 
> We seem to have lost principle 2, the initial decision support. We help 
> the author check things once the decision is made, we help them repair 
> things when they have determined that they have made a mistake, but we 
> have no initial guidance or problem prevention - to help them make the 
> right decisions from the start or avoid inaccessible choices.
> 
> I therefore propose we include the following in B.2.1 -
> 
> "B.2.1.X Provide Decision Support: If the authoring tool presents 
> choices to the author(s), provide information to assist the author in 
> making choices that enable the content to conform to WCAG 2.0. (Level A) "
> 
> We don't want to be prescriptive or didactic about how this is done. The 
> techniques document would list a range of techniques for providing this 
> decision support whether it is some way of indicating which choices are 
> accessible and which are not, or some way of indicating the importance 
> and priority of taking certain steps from an accessibility perspective.
> 
> Jutta
> 
> 

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

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

Received on Monday, 24 August 2009 19:54:50 UTC