Re: First draft of "Selecting Software for Developing Accessible Web Sites"

On Fri, 14 Dec 2001, Judy Brewer wrote:

  At 01:39 AM 12/14/01 -0500, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
  >It would be useful if there was a dated version identifier as well as a
  >latest version URI - particularly in terms of review comments. (This review
  >was made on the version provided at 0630UTC 14122001)

  Date is there, at bottom of document, and serves as version identifier.
  There is a lobby to move it near top. There is another lobby to keep tops
  of WAI Resource docs free of as much doc status info as possible so reader
  can fall in. May re-try status links from doc top [editor - status -
  updated - copyright] to info at bottom of doc.

  WAI Resource docs are edited in place, rather than w/ latest version URI's.

Maybe I am just to used to W3C specifications. I think that you could have a
single link "Document info (editor, date etc)" at the top, or simply
establish a look and feel for the suite and let people get used to it - there
are a lot of documents that have that information at the bottom.

Having easy access to previous versions is helpful for an ongoing review
process and checking what has happened before.

  >Many of the reviews are up to date, although they are not complete reviews -
  >normally covering some sections of ATAG only.

  Difficult to tell which are up to date. Some of the dates are quite old &
  not clear whether there are later product versions.

OK, the working group will think about ways to make it clearer and more
useful. (Feedback on any of the group's pages is welcome - it helps also to
know if people are looking at pages)

  Why not complete reviews?

Time usually, expertise sometimes. Evaluating an authoring tool can be a
complex process and is often fairly lengthy. Most of the reviews are done by
volunteers with limited time available, and some questions require technical
knowledge of the tool that is not always readily available.

  >Another question to ask is
  >
  >   which tool meets the particular accessibility requirements of current
  >   staff, which tools will meet possible new needs?

  This might leave some procurement people puzzled, particularly the part
  about trying to predict the future. But we can experiment with different
  tweaks of this.

Yes, I think that some work on the wording would be important. I haven't ever
tried to express it in this brief a form before.

cheers

Charles

Received on Friday, 14 December 2001 20:44:19 UTC