Thoughts on Comment #7 (was Re: [DRAFT] EOWG replies to WCAG WG responses on WCAG 2.0 LCWD)

Hi,

Judy Brewer wrote:
> [DRAFT EOWG REPLIES TO WCAG WG FOLLOWS]
>
[...]
>
> Comment #7: (Discuss SAZ comment.)

As background for discussion, please find below the comment I put into 
the survey on Comment #7 and some thoughts on why I put it:

COMMENT:
The "one of the following" phrasing has been removed, yet it is still 
somewhat difficult to understand success criteria 1.1.1 for the 
following reasons:
  - the description of the exceptions is much more elaborate than the 
common situation itself, making it hard to understand what is expected 
with "equivalent information";
  - the description of the exceptions is hard to read because of the 
complex sentence structure, and many links within the text;


THOUGHTS:
The phrasing of success criterion 1.1.1 is very dense and may have a lot 
of implicit assumptions that are not spelled out. Specifically, the term 
"equivalent information" needs quite a bit of explaining for it to be 
unambiguous. For example, consider the following situation:

  - someone wants to provide text alternatives for images of a puzzle, 
riddle, or joke; what kind of information should be in that alternative?

 From reading the success criterion, it seems to fall under the 
exception "a test or exercise that must be presented in non-text format, 
or primarily intended to create a specific sensory experience". So I'd 
need to "at least identify the non-text content with a descriptive text 
label". But I think I need to do more than "identify" the image, I need 
to describe the intention of the image in an appropriate way. So is it 
not an exception after all, and is this (intention of the image) what is 
meant by "equivalent information"?

Anyway, I'm aware there is a notion of keeping the guidelines document 
as short as possible and put any clarifications into the Understanding 
document (or else where). However, I'm wondering if the guidelines are 
becoming too concise in certain areas and providing room for ambiguity.


Regards,
   Shadi


-- 
Shadi Abou-Zahra     Web Accessibility Specialist for Europe |
Chair & Staff Contact for the Evaluation and Repair Tools WG |
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Received on Friday, 1 June 2007 10:45:04 UTC