RE: Outreach

Hi Jonathan,
Thanks Jonathan for the much longer commentary.  Also thanks for clarifying
for the public that we are writing for EO (Education and Outreach) not GL
(Guidelines).

My interest is not exactly the same as yours, i.e. I am highly interested in
the issue of cognitive disabilities (which I mean to cover more than the
narrow focus some people have of the technical term) and accessibility.

You wrote,
There is at least as valid a case that we need to address the needs of 
individuals* and to ensure that our advice is clear and unambiguous. Good
examples are invaluable, the lack of them continues to make 
differentiation of the purpose of title and alt ambiguous.

Doyle,
I don't see this as exactly an issue of individuals outside of organizations
but how does one understand the networked social structure of IT.  In other
words I don't see in my mind that there is public mind outside what we are
doing, but rather how does our structure work to admit any other mind into
our work barrier free.  That Web Accessibility means inclusion of everyone.
That doesn't say what you write disagrees with that, but I focus on what you
say here,

You wrote,
It is only by inviting 
contributions from members of the public, that we will fully understand 
the usability issues that are slowing our progress with this group.

Doyle,
I think it is good for the public to be a part of any of these discussions.
Let's take Slash Dot as an example where a highly technical subject matter
is open to the public for discussion.  They have about 2 million subscribers
in the last count, and a system for free expression.  But what is missing
from that public is the sense of how cognitive impairment shapes barriers in
discourse.  So I don't think of Slash Dot as a place for someone with
Cognitive Impairment to go to get the latest about technology in a barrier
free way.  And therefore inviting individuals for participation has virtues
but not a solution to the problem that we face with cognitive barriers.

You wrote,
My feeling is that the latter is a far greater proportion ~10:1 perhaps 
or even 100:1, and one can only expect this ratio to increase as time 
passes.

We have perhaps fallen into the trap of believing that all sites are 
documents similar to those we create, and write our guidance for, 
whereas many sites in fact serve very different purposes.

Doyle,
In this case you refer to how the public creates their own pages.  You make
for example a crucial point in this comment,

You wrote,
Given that the site in discussion has 80 images and no text or sound, 
it would need a great story teller to maintain interest for a blind 
visitor, the challenge is well worth the effort. Do we even speak of 
story telling at WAI?

Doyle,
I don't think story telling is the way to approach the idea of Cognitive
impairment.  I prefer in theory Joint Attention theory in Cognitive
Psychology as a means of addressing the technical issues of cognitive
impairment.

Any web page anyone makes is meant to share attention space/time with
someone else.  Some cognitive disabilities such as Autism are disabilities
around the issue of sharing attention.

What we don't adequately address in the technology is focus of attention and
sharing attention in web pages.  So if we invited a member of the public
with Aspergers Syndrome (high functioning Autistic like symptoms to
medicalize for a moment) would we have a means for them to participate in
the EO or any other group in a barrier free way?

Let me be more concrete about this issue.  In Joint Attention theory, an
infant gazes at a parental figure and realizes that the parent looks at
them, and looks at other things.  The child gazes at something the parent
looks at and 'shares' attention.  Essentially in each figures mind shares a
sense that when each looks at something similar in mental activities happen,
or share 'attention' structure in each persons brain.  If mom looks at the
toy, I am doing the same thing in my head.

How could the technology possibly address these issues?  And I would want
this theorizing to include blind people who aren't going to share vision
with someone.

Technologically shared attention means that if you look at something I can
cognate attention also at something we are sharing in the moment.  So we are
asking ourselves what is the shape and structure of shared attention (not a
subset of shared attention like story telling).

The technology of that is geographic realism (GPS and talking signs).  We
don't have consumer products that can address 'augmented' reality computing,
but we have engineering research that points at this area
http://www.shared-reality.de/index.php?part=main&main=opener&sub=page&lang=E
N.  Walking through a landscape and sticking information to the landscape is
augmented reality (the U.S. military has some programs in this area)
http://www.augmented-reality.org/.  There is research at some labs that
address that issue http://www.media.mit.edu/wearables/
http://www.wearablegroup.org/.  But that is the fundamental place where
cognitive disabilities meets Web Accessibility.  So that for an Autistic
person as they walk through a landscape a web page is presented to them as
they gaze at the landscape in a usable barrier free way.

For example, if I had a stroke and my frontal lobe was damaged, My attention
structure would be greatly altered.  My remaining living brain structures
having spent a life time performing together with what is missing could
still perform attention and probably want to share with others my attention.
Do we have any sense of what that sharing might be like?

If an average autistic person joins EO do we have a sense of sharing
attention with them?

That is where I think the most profound work lies ahead for Web
Accessibility.  This area lies at the heart of language (where Joint
Attention theory is posited as the foundation for language) like use of the
web http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/vertegaal99gaze.html.  For anyone who can't
read or write, or does not speak a common language shared attention is the
barrier by which we strive to succeed.
Thanks,
Doyle




Doyle Saylor 
Business Systems Consultant 
Intranet Hosting Services 
Wells Fargo Services Corporation 
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Chetwynd [mailto:j.chetwynd@btinternet.com] 
Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2003 10:22 PM
To: saylordj@WellsFargo.COM
Cc: w3c-wai-eo@w3.org
Subject: Re: Outreach

Doyle, (this is eo not gl)

in brief the perceived WAI audience is seen to be government, commerce 
and web specialists, so WAI documents are designed as far as possible 
to suit this perception. There is a somewhat valid argument that as a 
'standards' organisation this is appropriate.

There is at least as valid a case that we need to address the needs of 
individuals* and to ensure that our advice is clear and unambiguous.
Good examples are invaluable, the lack of them continues to make 
differentiation of the purpose of title and alt ambiguous.

I have invited, Alan Firminger to join IG, though EO might potentially 
be a friendlier environment, he expresses interest in WAI and believes 
he has read and understood the guidelines. It is only by inviting 
contributions from members of the public, that we will fully understand 
the usability issues that are slowing our progress with this group.

Are stats available that show the bulk relationship between 
professional and amateur authored pages?
My feeling is that the latter is a far greater proportion ~10:1 perhaps 
or even 100:1, and one can only expect this ratio to increase as time 
passes.
We have perhaps fallen into the trap of believing that all sites are 
documents similar to those we create, and write our guidance for, 
whereas many sites in fact serve very different purposes.

To give a particular example from http://www.peepo.com. We understand 
that the semantic web offers the opportunity to provide plain English 
executive summaries. None-the-less due to a paucity of online 
resources, for some topics we only have links to sites which use 'child 
friendly' illustrations, which some staff and students deem 
inappropriate for our adult users. You can imagine the necessary work; 
for instance in numeracy ludo is a useful game, the only online version 
i have found is in chinese, and has child friendly illustrations.

The use and benefits of alt/title text in general with online games is 
not well evidenced. examples of accessible games could be very helpful.
It is not clear how alt/title text will work with SVG. In a similar way 
to drop down menus, tooltips are invaluable, yet SVG seems not to have 
standardised their usage, and there are undoubtedly reasons for this.

Given that the site in discussion has 80 images and no text or sound, 
it would need a great story teller to maintain interest for a blind 
visitor, the challenge is well worth the effort. Do we even speak of 
story telling at WAI?

Jonathan

*Compare with law which applies to individuals, as well as corporations 
and indeed government, notwithstanding that it is created with legal 
advice, and there is only minimal defence that the defendant did not 
know or understand the offence .



On Thursday, May 22, 2003, at 03:20 PM, saylordj@WellsFargo.COM wrote:

> Hello All,
> Jonathan asked me to post to the W3C guidelines.
>
> Jonathan makes a point (below) that the guidelines are unclear in some 
> ways
> about how to make a site accessible.  There are areas which leave 
> things up
> in the air of course.  In particular defining what it means for 
> someone with
> a cognitive impairment is not well defined.
>
> I wonder though about not putting alt text in for images.  That seems 
> to me
> to be where the guidelines are most clear.  Perhaps Jonathan could 
> comment
> on clarity in more depth.
> Doyle
>
> Doyle Saylor
> Business Systems Consultant
> Intranet Hosting Services
> Wells Fargo Services Corporation
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan Chetwynd [mailto:j.chetwynd@btinternet.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2003 10:16 PM
> To: saylordj@WellsFargo.COM
> Subject: Re: Outreach
>
> Doyle,
>
> Perhaps you could post your comments to the list.
> This person genuinely believes they are following W3C guidelines, and
> over an exchange of a  dozen e-mails has tried to develop the site to
> meet our understanding.
>
> You can tell there is a way to go, and much of this is because of a
> failure of clarity on the part of WAI.
> with regard to scripts, did you read:
> Client-side Scripting Techniques for Web Content Accessibility
> Guidelines 2.0
> http://www.learningdifficulty.org/develop/script-techs.html
>
> Jonathan
>
>
> On Wednesday, May 21, 2003, at 10:52 PM, saylordj@WellsFargo.COM wrote:
>
>> Jonathan,
>> When I went to the website below the images had no alt text, and
>> interestingly when I put the site on my scroll bar it bounced back to
>> the
>> front of the desk top over my other work.  I couldn't stop this
>> behavior
>> which is something I've never seen before.  I had to close that 
>> window.
>> Doyle
>>
>> Doyle Saylor
>> Business Systems Consultant
>> Intranet Hosting Services
>> Wells Fargo Services Corporation
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Jonathan Chetwynd [mailto:j.chetwynd@btinternet.com]
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2003 2:21 PM
>> To: w3c-wai-eo@w3.org
>> Subject: Outreach
>>
>>
>> As some of you will know, it has always been my belief that web
>> accessibility will be working well when individuals rather than
>> organisations are creating accessible web pages.
>>
>> To that end, I'd like to mention one of the best websites that peepo
>> currently links to http://www.magpol.org/s8/0.html
>> (this is a personal view, it's a tough call)
>>
>> The website manager has made changes to the site that don't effect the
>> appearance, but attempt to make it accessible within our current
>> understanding.
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
>> In a way I suppose this is a request for more resources designed for
>> the non-profit sector.
>> We plainly are not meeting this need currently, and this is a
>> significant sector of the whole market.
>>
>

Received on Friday, 23 May 2003 09:13:31 UTC