Fwd: Comments on latest proposed draft WCAG 2.0 glossary

FYI, submitted the following comments on latest WCAG 2.0 internal draft 
glossary.

- Judy

>Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2006 14:31:58 +0100
>To: Gregg Vanderheiden <gv@trace.wisc.edu>, John Slatin 
><john_slatin@austin.utexas.edu>, Ben Caldwell <caldwell@trace.wisc.edu>
>From: Judy Brewer <jbrewer@w3.org>
>Subject: Comments on latest proposed draft WCAG 2.0 glossary
>
>Gregg, John, Ben,
>
>These EOWG comments are on the 27 Feb 2006 draft of WCAG 2.0 Appendix A.
>
>Where we have no comments on your newly proposed definitions, we have not 
>included those items in the list.
>
>In our comments below, "Proposed" refers to your proposed new definitions; 
>"problems" refers to the problems that we are having understanding these; 
>and "suggestions" refers to our suggestions on how to improve these.
>
>Please let us know if you have any questions.
>
>Feel free to forward this to the WCAG comments list or editor's list if 
>you want it there for reference.
>
>Regards,
>
>- Judy
>
># ALTERNATE VERSION
>Proposed: "version that provides all of the same information and 
>functionality and is as up to date as any non-conformant content"
>Problem: definition seems not to make sense unless last word "content" is 
>changed to "version"
>Suggestion: change last word "content" to "version"?
>
># ANALOG, TIME-DEPENDENT INPUT
>Proposed: "Input where the outcome of the input is different depending on 
>the rate of the analog movement (such as when line width varies with pen 
>speed or pressure.)
>         Note: This phrase is used to differentiate conditions where there 
> is no known method for allowing keyboard control from those situations 
> were keyboard commands can be used.
>         Example: Examples of actions often done with a mouse but which 
> can also be done with a keyboard include clicking, selecting, moving, sizing.
>         Example: An example of something that uses analog, time-dependent 
> input would be a watercolor program where stroke width and opacity is a 
> function of the rate of movement (and/or pressure) of a "brush"."
>
>Problem: Needs additional explanation and/or more examples to be 
>understandable. In particular, the phrase "input where the outcome of the 
>input is..." seems the most un-parseable, and just did not help explain 
>the term.
>Suggestion: Perhaps the definition could be re-worded further.
>
>#BASELINE:
>Proposed:
>"    set of technologies assumed to be supported by, and enabled in, user 
>agents
>     Note: Baseline is used by authors to determine which technologies 
> they can assume are active when they build accessible content.
>     Note: Baseline is used by users to determine what technologies they 
> must have (and have turned on) in there user agents in order to have 
> general access to websites. (If specific websites specify what they "rely 
> upon" users can access those sites by simply having the technologies 
> 'relied upon' active in their user agents)
>     Note: Organizations or Governments can use Baselines to set 
> reasonable expectations (and limits on expectations) for what 
> technologies their constituents will need to have supported in their user 
> agents.
>     Note: Some examples of entities that may set baselines that an author 
> may have to follow include the author, a company, a customer and 
> government entities."
>
>Problem: As there is a lot of controversy around the baseline concept in 
>WCAG 2.0, it may be more problematic to have a definition w/ an partial 
>explanation as above -- inotherwords it may be unnecessarily alarming -- 
>rather than having a more concise presentation here, with a complete 
>explanation available by link.
>Suggested: Use the definition exclusively without the notes. Add a pointer 
>to the full discussion of baseline.
>
>#CAPTIONS
>Proposed:
>"text that is typically presented and synchronized within or below a 
>multimedia presentation that provides not only the dialog but also sound 
>effects and sometimes speaker identification.
>     Note: In some countries, the term "subtitle" is used to refer to 
> dialog only and "captions" is used as the term for dialog plus sounds and 
> speaker identification. In other countries, subtitle (or its translation) 
> is used to refer to both."
>
>Problem: the term "dialog" may be inaccurate; "speech" (more general) 
>would be more accurate.
>Suggestion: See EOWG definition after we re-word it [but we need to finish 
>re-wording it!]
>
># CONTENT
>Proposed:
>"information in Web pages or other primary resources that are used by the 
>user agent to generate perceivable units.
>    Note: This includes the code and markup that define the structure, 
> presentation, and interaction, as well as text, images, and sounds that 
> convey information to the end-user.
>     Editorial Note: ??? Is "perceivable units" still needed here?"
>
>Problem: We're unclear whether you need "user agent," and don't think that 
>"perceivable units" is either needed nor even accurate.
>Suggestion: Either just use "Information in Web pages or other primary 
>resources" and stop there, or continue through "user agent"; but could you 
>please tell us what is actually excluded from your concept of content?
>
># DELIVERY UNIT
>Proposed: Change to:
>"Web page or other primary resource
>collection of information, consisting of one or more resources, intended 
>to be rendered together, and identified by a single Uniform Resource 
>Identifier (URLs etc.)
>Note: This definition based on the definition of Web page in Web 
>Characterization Terminology & Definitions Sheet. The concept of 
>simultaneity was removed to allow the term to cover interactive and 
>scripted content.
>Example: A Web page including all embedded images and media.
>Example: An interactive movie-like shopping environment where the user 
>navigates about and activates products to have them demonstrated, and 
>moves them to cart to buy them."
>Problem: See below
>Suggestion: Yes this term is much much better! The only problem here is 
>that, after demoting the more precise term "delivery unit" so that it is 
>no longer the main term, the EOWG suggests that do go ahead and add it 
>into the definition of the phrase "Web pages or other primary resources" 
>so that people who do know the term delivery unit will see that that's 
>what we mean.
>
># IDIOMS:
>Proposed: " words or phrases specific to a region or language that do not 
>mean what the dictionary definitions of the individual words say
>
>Example: The English phrase "he blew his stack" means that someone became 
>very angry."
>Problem: We've been advised by someone from the UK that, given a different 
>local idiomatic meaning of your example phrase than the one you intended, 
>you really don't want to be using this example here.
>Suggestion: New example.
>
># LUMINOSITY CONTRAST RATIO
>Proposed: "(L1 + 0.05) / (L2 + 0.05), where L1 is the luminosity of the 
>lighter of the text or background colors, and L2 is the luminosity of the 
>darker of the text or background colors..." etc.
>
>Problem: While the proposed definition is much better than the current 
>one, it is missing a basic intro to what luminosity means.
>Suggestion: Add a phrase at the start of the definition that says 
>'Luminosity deals with color contract and brightness. More precisely it is 
>. . ." then go on w/ your new proposed definition.
>
># NORMATIVE
>Current: Required for conformance.
>Problem: You wanted confirmation of this. Apologies, we have nothing new 
>on this for now, but also no problems w/ the current one.
>
># PROGRAMMATICALLY DETERMINED
>Proposed: "recognized by assistive technologies that support the 
>technologies in the chosen baseline"
>
>Problem: should also include being recognized by user agents not just 
>assistive technologies, but it is not understandable, even if one already 
>knows all three of the linked terms embedded within this. The current 
>definition was not particularly understandable either. Possibly in this 
>instance using the ISO-definition format makes this harder to understand.
>Suggestion: Adding a subject might also help, even if in brackets, e.g. 
>"[Content that is] recognized by user agents or assistive technologies 
>that support the technologies in the chosen baseline"
>
>#. REAL-TIME EVENTS
>Proposed: "real world event occurring at the same time as the viewing and 
>not generated by the content and not recorded"
>Problem: Event may not be real-world, it may be virtual instead. We're 
>sorry, but this definition does not make full sense to us (even beyond the 
>real-world issue), and we don't have a suggestion for how to improve.
>
>#. UNICODE
>Proposed definition:
>"universal character set that defines all the characters needed for 
>writing the majority of living languages in use on computers"
>
>Problems:
>- Unicode is not restricted to living languages
>- FYI, the following is the actual definition of Unicode from the Unicode 
>Consortium's glossary. "The universal character encoding, maintained by 
>the Unicode Consortium, which provides the basis for processing, storage 
>and interchange of text data in any language in all modern software and 
>information technology protocols."
>- However, we have concerns about "any language" -- better to say "any 
>natural language"?
>- and also concerns about "all modern software" etc
>Suggestion:
>1. [our preferred choice, from Wikipedia:] The universal character 
>encoding, maintained by the Unicode Consortium, the goal for which is to 
>provide the means by which text of all forms and languages can be encoded 
>for use by computers.
>2. [an adjusted version of Unicode's glossary item, if you really want to 
>use something from them] "The universal character encoding maintained by 
>the Unicode Consortium, which provides the basis for processing, storage 
>and interchange of text data in [any] [(add:) natural] language in 
>[(delete:) all modern] software and information technology protocols."
>
>--
>Judy Brewer    +1.617.258.9741    http://www.w3.org/WAI
>Director, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
>MIT/CSAIL Building 32-G530
>32 Vassar Street
>Cambridge, MA,  02139,  USA

-- 
Judy Brewer    +1.617.258.9741    http://www.w3.org/WAI
Director, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
MIT/CSAIL Building 32-G530
32 Vassar Street
Cambridge, MA,  02139,  USA

Received on Thursday, 2 March 2006 13:43:33 UTC