Requirements for a "Beginners lexicon for WAI documents"

Dear EOWG collegues,

Here is a next version of the requirements for a concise "WAI sub
glossary", now under the name "Beginners lexicon for WAI documents".
I added also some more examples to feed the discussion and a section
"process".


Regards,
Henk Snetselaar

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Requirements for a "Beginners lexicon for WAI documents"


Status of this document
This is a fourth draft of the requirements for a concise WAI sub
glossary (June 7, 2004)

Introduction
The Education and Outreach Working Group is considering composing an
"extended explanation for complex WAI terms" containing only
approximately 30-40 most common words or concepts as an aid to
translators and to non US-English people dealing with WAI documents.

The WAI has a glossary of terms at
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/Glossary/printable.
The purpose of that glossary is to allow comparison of definitions, and
potentially to provide a single glossary for all the accessibility
guidelines. The various WAI working groups and individual readers of
more than one guideline will benefit from a consistent use of terms.
The WAI glossary contains more then 500 words in total. 


Primary audience
- Translators of WAI documents 
- Readers who are not familiar with the US-English (WAI) terms.

Secondary audience
- Readers of WAI documents not yet familiar with web accessibility and
its terms. 

Purpose
The purpose of a WAI sub glossary is to aid translators by describing
the meaning of (technical) terms with a 'WAI contextual meaning' used in
the WAI documents. 
An additional purpose is to aid non US-English people to give some
background on specific US-English accessibility expressions. This
lexicon will contain only 30-40 most common words or concepts, there
should be no confusion with the WAI glossary.

Approach
To decide what words should be in the glossary the following approach
can be used:
- Words not findable in a general dictionary;
- Words with a (WAI) specific or contextual meaning;
- Words with different synonyms in different regions or contries;
- The explanation of the words is in clear and plain language.

Scope
- Words occurring in top ten of most read (beginners) WAI documents,
taking the list "priorities for translatinng WAI documents" in
consideration as resource. Besides W3C site statistics will be used to
determine the most commonly read of the translation priorities.

Process
The process of selecting and taking in words and explaining their
meaning for the lexicon will be as follows:
1. words will be taken from existing glossaries;
2. the explanation of the words in question will be examined for the
use of clear and plain language;
If the explanation does not have clear and plain language and should be
altered:
a) concerning words drawn from documents that are not yet fixed; by
deliberation another explanation will be discussed (with the
authors?).
b) concerning words drawn from documents that are already fixed, an
alternative, clearer, explanation will be proposed.
c) concerning words drawn from documents that are already fixed, and
appear
in multiple documents, an alternative, clearer, explanation will be
proposed that combines the intention of the two definitions.


Content 
The sub glossary will contain:
- Entry: word or term
- Origin: context or document(s) containing the entry
- The explanation

Format for Listings
Basic format:
Word or term [context or document(s) containing the word]
Explanation

Example

Device-dependent [WCAG20] 
Used to describe event handlers that require a specific kind of input
device. For example, onDblClick requires a mouse; there is no keyboard
equivalent for double clicking. Input devices may include pointing
devices (such as the mouse), keyboards, Braille devices, head wands,
microphones, and others. Output devices may include monitors, speech
synthesizers, and Braille devices. Scripting should be
device-independent or provide multiple input and output options for
different devices.

Audio Description also called described video or video description
[UAAG10]
An audio description (called an "auditory description" in the Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 [WCAG10]) is either a prerecorded
human voice or a synthesized voice (recorded or generated dynamically)
describing the key visual elements of a movie or other animation. The
audio description is synchronized with (and possibly included as part
of) the audio track of the presentation, usually during natural pauses
in the audio track. Audio descriptions include information about
actions, body language, graphics, and scene changes.

Captions [UAAG10] 
Captions are text transcripts that are synchronized with other audio
tracks or visual tracks. Captions convey information about spoken words
and non-spoken sounds such as sound effects. They benefit people who are
deaf or hard-of-hearing, and anyone who cannot hear the audio (e.g.,
someone in a noisy environment). Captions are generally rendered
graphically superimposed ("on top of") the synchronized visual track. 
The term "open captions" generally refers to captions that are always
rendered with a visual track; they cannot be turned off. The term
"closed captions" generally refers to captions that may be turned on and
off. The captions requirements of this document assume that the user
agent can recognize the captions as such; see the section on
applicability for more information.
Note: Other terms that include the word "caption" may have different
meanings in this document. For instance, a "table caption" is a title
for the table, often positioned graphically above or below the table. In
this document, the intended meaning of "caption" will be clear from
context.

Cascading Style Sheet (s) [High-Tech] 
Style sheets describe how documents are presented on screens, in print,
and even in spoken voice. Style sheets allow the user to change the
appearance of hundreds of Web pages by changing just one file. A style
sheet is made up of rules that tell a browser how to present a document.
Numerous properties may be defined for an element; each property is
given a value.

Content [ATAG10] 
In this specification, the term "content " is used in two ways: 
1.	Content refers to the document object as a whole or in parts.
Phrases such as "content type", "text content", and "language of
content" refer to this usage. When used in this sense, the term content
encompasses equivalent alternatives. Refer also to the definition of
rendered content. and other accessibility information. 
2.	Content refers to the content of an HTML or XML element, in the
sense employed by the XML 1.0 specification ( XML, section 3.1): "The
text between the start-tag and end-tag is called the element's content."
Context should indicate that the term content is being used in this
sense.


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H. Snetselaar
Bartimeus Educational Institute for the Blind and Partially Sighted
Utrechtseweg 84, 3702 AD  Zeist, the Netherlands
Tel: +31-(0)30-6982211 or +31(0)30-6982350
Fax: +31-(0)30-6982388
E-mail: H.Snetselaar@bartimeus.nl
Website: www.bartimeus.nl and www.accessibility.nl
Zie voor disclaimer (Read our disclaimer):
www.accessibility.nl/disclaimer.html 
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Received on Thursday, 10 June 2004 09:44:46 UTC