Re: review of re: WCAG curriculum

Chuck's responses are inserted into your message, and prefaced with CPL::

At 21/06/99 05:11 PM , Wendy A Chisholm wrote:
>Hello,
>
>WOW - a lot of work has gone into the curriculum! it looks great!

CPL:: Thanks from Chuck and Geoff!

>preface:
>I have not been keeping up with the reviews of the curriculum and apologize if
>my comments duplicate others.
>
>1.  slide 8 (Introduction Usage: in a classroom setting) links to "background
>on the W3C and WAI."  Instead of linking to it, since the reader will arrive
>there in a few slides, that it ought to say (slides 13-n).  Otherwise, the
>reader may skip slides 9-12 or be confused when they end up back at 13.
>

CPL::  I agree with your assessment.  I have changed the wording in
Introduction slide 8.

>2. 
><http://www.starlingweb.com/wai/two/spn.htm> (link from slide 9) is 404.
>

CPL:: Thanks for noticing... speaker's notes were eliminated from this
version of the curriculum since most of the notes created for earlier
versions had been worked into the bodies of the example slides. I left the
Introduction slide (9), but changed the wording to indicate what features
speaker's notes will take if and when they are deemed necessary again.
404-Link removed.

>3.  slide 10 - when you refer to "curricula use" (slide 8) - perhaps say that
>it is slide 8 so that people don't have to hop to it and back again without
>thinking it is something new.
>

CPL:: Got it!

>4. 
><http://www.starlingweb.com/wai/three/overgid.htm> is awesome.  i didn't
see this at first and was
>overwhelmed. i'm glad there is a toc like this.

CPL:: I'd like to take credit, but the W3C Slidemaker Tool generates these
ToC's automatically.

>
>5. i like that guideline slides are one color, checkpoints another, and
>examples another.  
>
>However, it didn't help me maintain orientation as well as i had originally
>thought! <grin>  I got confused after i followed the link "checkpoints for
>guideline 1" towards the bottom of the slide for guideline one (in the
>Guideline stack).  I had pressed "next" a couple times and realized, once i
>got
>to a page that i knew had nothing to do with guideline 1, that i wasn't
>looking
>at the next guideline, i was looking at the next checkpoint.  
>
>It took me a while to realize that once I started down a checkpoint path (by
>pressing the next button) that I was only in "checkpoint land."  I think part
>of the confusion came from the title "checkpoint.  1. provide ...".   In the
>example slides the title is, "example for <BR> <x.y checkpoint text>." a
>similar model for checkpoint might be "checkpoint for <br> <x. guideline
>text>."

CPL:: Great idea!  I modify the Slidemaker PERL scripts to make the titles
more informative:
<Checkpoint for Guideline [nl] x text>, and <Example for Checkpoint [nl]
x.y text>.  Doing anything fancier (e.g. Checkpoint y for Guideline x) is
beyond my PERL scripting abilities at the moment. I would have to parse the
slide title passed from the original HTML file and that is for someone who
actually knows PERL (I don't!)

>
>6. slide 90 of the example stack has some strange positoning going on.  The
>middle and right form groups were overlapping when i first went to the page. 
>if i increase the width of the browser they are all right, but definitely
>closer together than the left and center form groups.
>
CPL:: Sigh...  This whole slide is a pain in the neck.  The example I
designed is an inaccessible use of TABLE to lay out related groups of FORM
controls.   I was hoping that use of the new HTML 4.0 LABEL,  LEGEND and
FIELDSET elements and attributes would make complex forms accessible even
if the visual layout was not ideal (i.e. grouped with TABLES).  However,
since there is no way to test this theorem at the moment (as far as I know,
anyway) perhaps I should rethink the example.  It seems to me that if
future User Agents do what they are supposed to with LABEL, LEGEND and
FIELDSET, then it won't really matter to the end user how the various
groups are visually laid out.  Maybe this is just an example before its own
time.  By the way, the only way to see this slide without overlapping the
cells is to view it at full screen on a good sized monitor.  This is bad.
I will fix it (but not right now).

>7.  slide 100 of example stack:  not only should we be emphasizing that people
>want to use more complex boolean searches, but that if someone does not spell
>well (either because of a learning disability or the language of the search is
>not their primary language), a spell checker or some sort of choice of words
>could be provided if an entered word was not found.  there are a variety of
>search strategies that people have discussed that  ought to be highlighted (to
>spark some innovation!).

CPL::  Excellent point.  I have added a paragraph mentioning the
spell-check/word list possibility to Example slide 100 as a quick update.
However, when I get back from vacation I will see about adding more, as you
suggest.  Perhaps you or someone else who is willing to do a bit work could
put together a short section that could be added to this slide.

>
>8. slide 106 of example stack ought to be updated once consensus is reached
>re:
>the QED/learning disabilities thread. 

CPL:: When there is something simple enough for ME to understand, I will.
This curriculum may be less dense and more graphical than the WCAG
(therefore somewhat more accessible to some with LD), but it certainly
doesn't go far enough in that direction yet.  I think every iteration of
this material should take that into consideration and strive for improvement.

>
>9.  there are several slides that seem pretty long.  They most likely will not
>display on a single page when projected.  Not sure if this is a concern or
>not,
>but you might want to split some of those up. ??  Just a thought.
>
CPL:: I will likely split them up (but not right now).  I am torn between
keeping an internally consistent narrative on one page (to facilitate
printing) or to break up the long pages (to facilitate display).  The
eternal conflict!  I suppose that it doesn't really matter which is done as
long as the entire curriculum does it consistently.  Perhaps some metadata
could be added to a series of slides that are meant to be contiguous so
that a future user agent would print the pages as one document (or page) on
a single print command. I don't know what form that metadata should take.
Maybe an RDF expert could tell me.

>10.  there are a few slides where the "slide x of y" is not directly over the
>nav buttons as it is on most slides.

CPL:: the positioning of the "slide x of y" text is dependent on the length
of the <H1>TITLE </H1> line for some reason... even though the style says
RIGHT JUSTIFY.  I haven't been able to figure out a fix for this yet.

>
>11.  there are a few slides (e.g., Guideline slide #10 -
>http://www.starlingweb.com/wai/three/gid10-0.htm) where the text differs from
>WCAG1.0.  I believe this is text that existed before going to Rec.  If not,
>are
>there places were an interpretation of a guideline/checkpoint is made to make
>the concept clear?  If so, please point these out so we can incorporate them
>into the next release (some time far in the future <grin>).
>

CPL:: Yeah... we "went to press" using a version the WCAG guidelines that
predated the official WCAG release by only three-days.  You editors made a
huge amount of minor changes over that last weekend and I haven't had a
chance to go back and do the required cut and paste.  It will be a simple
matter when I get to it after vacation.

>
>wendy chisholm
>human factors engineer
>trace research and development center
>university of wisconsin - madison, USA
>

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Received on Monday, 28 June 1999 18:46:48 UTC