Re: Selecting and Using Authoring Tools for Web Accessibility

In the Education and Outreach group meeting today, we were discussing
the subject draft about Authoring Tools (not ready for referencing, other
than a work in progress -- otherwise I'd have also sent it to the 
Authoring Tools group). See:

     http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/impl/software4.html

On the topic of examples of strategies to work around limitations of 
existing authoring tools --  

The Authoring Tools Accessibility Guidelines mentions adding <!DOCTYPE ...> if it is not already at the start of an appropriate HTML/XHTML/XML
document.  Also for XML-base applications, the '<?xml version="1.0"?>' 
needs to precede the DOCTYPE.

I suggest that HTML/XHTML checking should also verify presence in 
<head lang="..."> (or xml:lang="...") of that primary lang value, 
and check further therein for presence of the required <title ...>. 
I believe we should also encourage addition of more meta information, 
such as Dublin core, to identify the set of finding aids there identified.

I found no mention in ATAG of usefulness of meta information to aid/focus 
searches, or otherwise inform the user, and how an authoring tool might support its generation. Some of it only results much later than when the manuscript is produced, so the original source material might not have it. 
If the structure and meaningful content are standardized, as with
Dublin Core, then the values can be used. Are there any authoring tools 
to help generate and validate such metadata?

Metadata is a possible subject for joint EO/AT discussion. 

Has the Authoring Tools group assessed the RDF Site Survey (RSS) work, 
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rss-dev/files/specification.html
which includes modules for Dublin Core metadata and Syndication.

Much of the metadata in a published book occurs on the reverse title 
page, often generated just before a book goes to publication. It is not now a natural part of most web pages, though corporate auto-generated pages could include it.

Regards/Harvey Bingham

Received on Friday, 18 January 2002 22:47:55 UTC