RE: EOWG: Please review and sign off on Standards Harmonization resource page

> Okay, but recommend the following changes (please specify)

OK, and for your consideration:

1. replace "for" with "of"

I think the last two "for"s should be "of"s in: "In this document
"standards harmonization" refers to the adoption of unified
international standards for accessibility of Web content, for authoring
tools used to develop Web sites, and for user agents including browsers
and media players."

As is, it states that there should be unified standards but does not
include for accessibility: "In this document "standards harmonization"
refers to the adoption of unified international standards for
accessibility of Web content, [the adoption of unified international
standards] for authoring tools used to develop Web sites, and [the
adoption of unified international standards] for user agents including
browsers and media players."

I think what is meant is standards for accessibility: "In this document
"standards harmonization" refers to the adoption of unified
international standards for accessibility of Web content, [the adoption
of unified international standards for accessibility] _of_ authoring
tools used to develop Web sites, and [the adoption of unified
international standards for accessibility] _of_ user agents including
browsers and media players."

corrected would be: "In this document "standards harmonization" refers
to the adoption of unified international standards for accessibility of
Web content, of authoring tools used to develop Web sites, and of user
agents including browsers and media players."

2. guidelines plural, techniques lower case

"There is sometimes discomfort with a guideline not developed locally,
yet WAI guidelines have been developed with input from many countries
around the world."

Guideline singular is awkward here - recommend making it plural
"guidelines"

"W3C continues to update and refine the WAI guidelines and supporting
Techniques documents and"

Techniques should be lowercase to match lowercase guidelines used
throughout - because here it refers to multiple documents, not a
specific document.

3. reality checks for credibility

3a. "There are sometimes barriers to adoption of non-ISO standards by
some governments, yet W3C is the leading standards organization for the
Web industry, and many of those same governments have already
standardized onto HTML and XML, which are W3C specifications."

This argument seems a bit uncomfortable. Much of the focus is on
countries adopting accessibility standards as legal requirements. Have
any governments adopted HTML and XML as legal requirements? If not, then
it seems like it's an apples & oranges comparison.

3b. "some authoring tools remove accessibility information such as
alternative text or captions."

I thought we couldn't come up with any that still do that so we were
going to either leave that out, or say they did it in the past.

3c. "When there is fragmentation of standards... Organizations must
provide different authoring tools, evaluation tools, training resources
and technical assistance for their Web developers,..."

- In practice, I doubt many orgs provide different authoring tools, and
maybe not any of the others.

3d. Can we support the ideas in the "information repositories" section?

4. tweaking

4a. "When there is fragmentation of standards, organizations with
audiences spanning different regions, countries, or sectors must
carefully monitor different sets of requirements. Organizations must
provide different authoring tools, evaluation tools, training resources
and technical assistance for their Web developers, which can take
resources away from actually implementing accessibility. They must push
harder to make the business case for accessibility within the
organization."

Last sentence not quite right - "push harder" isn't quite the right idea
and "they must" is too all-inclusive (plus, every sentence in that
paragraph has a "must" and I'm not sure any of them are quite right).
Instead, I think the idea is something like: The increase in cost and
effort of fragmented standards makes the business case [more difficult
to get adopted].

4b. "Availability of authoring tools conforming to ATAG 1.0 is key to
making the Web accessible because so many people who publish content on
the Web would have at their fingertips tools making it easy to create
accessible Web sites."

"at their fingertips" not quite right - e.g., tools cost money so not at
fingertips

5. Editor missing.

Add "Editor: Judy Brewer" at bottom? 

6. "For Web developers... development of accessible Web sites first
requires... a deliberate effort to apply WCAG 1.0."

Someone might argue against the assertion that developing accessibility
Web sites _requires_ WCAG1.0.

7. grammar & word correction

"Assist in preparing authorized translations of WAI guidelines (once
authorized standards policy goes into effect).g"

Should it be: "(once THE authorized TRANSLATIONS policy goes into
effect)." ?

Received on Monday, 24 May 2004 16:06:17 UTC