RE: role of authoring tools [Fwd: EOWG: Agenda for 7 July 2006 Teleconference]

Hi,

I had a chat with our web developer here regarding the questions below
and she gave the following. Apologies this is late but both of us have
been on leave at different times.

Henny

1. What functions are in the CMS have helped with the accessibility of
the site.

- Ability to get under the hood of the HTML in templates rather than
just a drag'n'drop interface.
- When converting an MS-Word doc to HTML, ability to map Word styles to
specific HTML tags, or to ignore them altogether.
- Choice to enforce XML compliance, improving the likelyhood that pages
will validate to W3C.

2. What functions are in the CMS hinder accessible output?

- Stupid-proof drag'n'drop gui's.
- Java applets not coded to be accessible.
- Drop-downs with OnChange events attached.
- Inbuilt javascript navigation.

3. What functions would you like to have in Stellant (or another tool
etc) to make a page more accessible.

- Assumption that output will be W3C compliant without tweaking.

4. If you had functions that enforced accessibility how would that help
you in terms of saving time?

- We wouldn't have to validate snapshots of pages from a dev server each
time we made a code change. 

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-eo-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-eo-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Shawn Henry
Sent: 07 July 2006 04:37
To: EOWG (E-mail)
Subject: role of authoring tools [Fwd: EOWG: Agenda for 7 July 2006
Teleconference]


<from agenda:>
3. Messaging the importance of authoring tools
* Discuss strengthening the "messaging" through metaphor(s) and
examples(s),  especially as it fits in with potential outreach campaigns
and slide sets </end from agenda>

EOWG,

Questions for input via e-mail and discussion via teleconference:

1. Examples of authoring tools role -- especially simple, easy to
understand examples that are powerful 1.a. What do authoring tools do
now to help develop accessible content (e.g., when insert an image, open
dialog box for alt text)?
1.b. What do authoring tools do now that hinder the development of
accessible content?
1.c. What else could authoring tools reasonably do to significantly
improve the development of accessible content -- especially things that
would be fairly easy for authoring tools to do that would save
developers/authors a lot of work?

2. Metaphors for:
2.a. A few 100 authoring tool vendors spending some effort to improve
their tools, to help a few *million* developers/authors develop
accessible content easier and quicker.
2.b. Improving authoring tools could make a huge difference in Web
accessibility. (perhaps something like: "change the course of history";
or a little rudder changing the course of a large ship, a little bit
controlling a horse, a little spark starting a huge forest fire[1]...)

3. Stats (for 2.a.)
- Rough idea of the number of authoring tools today?
- rough idea on the number of people developing Web pages?

Remember that authoring tools include content management systems (CMS),
blog software, and many other types, including those listed at:
	http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/atag.php#for

Please send comments to the list in addition to discussion at the
teleconference.

Thanks!
~ Shawn

[1] idea from the Bible, James 3:3-5




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Received on Tuesday, 25 July 2006 08:25:19 UTC