ATAG 2.0: Document usability - referring to authors

Currently we say "the author(s)" in our normative guidelines, but it 
causes lots of grammatical challenges and I think it makes the document 
harder to parse. This change was originally done to emphasize that 
multiple people might be involved in a workflow in different ways.

I think we can simply and better meet the multi-author role goal by the 
following:

(1) we change "the author(s)" to "authors" in the success criteria

(2) We add an applicability note to Part B to make it clear that not 
every author in a tool's workflow needs to have every ability prescribed 
in Part B, as long as someone does along the way.

#6. Multiple author roles: Some authoring tools include multiple author 
roles, each with different views and content editing permissions (e.g., 
a content management system may separate the roles of designers, content 
authors, and quality assurers). In these cases, the Part B success 
criteria apply to the authoring tool as a whole, not to the view 
provided to any particular author role.

(3) We can smooth out the definition of "authors" as well:

authors
People who use an authoring tool to create or modify web content for use 
by other people. This may include content authors, designers, 
programmers, publishers, testers, etc. working either alone or 
collaboratively (see also Part B Applicability Note #6). A person only 
qualifies as an author of some given content if (1) the authoring tool 
supports the relevant web content technology used to implement that 
content and (2) the person has author permission for that content.

Cheers,
Jan


-- 
(Mr) Jan Richards, M.Sc.
jan.richards@utoronto.ca | 416-946-7060

Adaptive Technology Resource Centre (ATRC)
Faculty of Information | University of Toronto

Received on Friday, 26 February 2010 21:57:01 UTC