Re: stab at betaw3 accessibility page

Hi Alan - thanks! My responses inline below.

Alan Chuter wrote:
> I really like the opening pitch, it's exactly what's needed. Here are a 
> few suggestions:
> 
> * Perhaps the "computer, software" could be a little more detailed, to 
> balance the detail in the "eyesight, hearing, ..."bit.

I played with this but it became jargon-y too quickly.

> * It might be interesting to start the "this may be due to..." phrase 
> with something more general like "it can happen to anyone, anytime" and 
> perhaps "happens to us all eventually as we grow older" then "can be 
> permanent impairment, injury"

Interesting... am also wrestling with the language of this.

> * The second page starts with "Inaccessible web pages" without 
> explaining what inaccessible means. Perhaps it would possible to expand 
> the word into an explanation like "Web pages that do not take account of 
> this diversity are badly designed. They disable people. We call this 
> inaccessibibility. The W3C's..."

Hmmm. Interesting.

> * Will people understand what "protocols" means here? I don't.

Not sure I do :)
Lifted from the formal description by Tim in Weaving the Web

> * The ocean of links at the end is like walking into quicksand. I think 
> what's needed here is some more introduction, to develop what comes 
> before (which is very brief). I don't think we should reproduce the WAI 
> homepage here. It's focus is Web accessibility, not just WAI.

Maybe my misunderstanding of the purpose of the page. I was trying to 
use it to get people quickly to WAI content. As the chunking and 
labelling of the content is already defined, for better or worse, this 
was the best way I could come up with of getting people quickly to what 
they want - providing 'trigger phrases' underneath the main menu items.

It's a repro of the WAi menu, with some gentle relabelling

> I have to dissent about the TBL quote at the start. To say that the Web 
> was "*designed* as a universal space" is misleading. "We would like the 
> Web to be a universal space" is closer to reality. There is nothing 
> about the Web that makes it accessible to everyone by default any more 
> than in the physical space. That's why this page is here. Actually TBL 
> elaborated with "By Universal I mean that the web is declared to be able 
> to contain in principle every bit of information accessible by networks" 
> [1] which is somewhat different. The original quote captured this 
> clearly, even if it is more restrictive in scope.

It's taken from http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/TLD

The full para reads:

The Web is designed as a universal space. Its universality is its most 
important facet. I spend many hours giving talks just to emphasize this 
point. The success of the Web stems from its universality as do most of 
the architectural constraints.

The Web must operate independently of the hardware, software or network 
used to access it, of the perceived quality or appropriateness of the 
information on it, and of the culture, and language, and physical 
capabilities of those who access it [WTW]. Hardware and network 
independence in particular have been crucial to the growth of the Web. 
In the past, network independence has been assured largely by the 
Internet architecture. The Internet connects all devices without regard 
to the type or size or band of device, nor with regard to the wireless 
or wired or optical infrastructure used. This is its great strength. 
 From its inception, the Web built upon this architecture and introduced 
device independence at the user interface level. By separating the 
information content from its presentation (as is possible by mixing HTML 
with CSS, XML with XSL and CSS, etc.) the Web allows the same 
information to be viewed from computers with all sorts of screen sizes, 
color depths, and so on. Many of the original Web terminals were 
character-oriented, and now visually impaired users use text-oriented 
interfaces to the same information.


> But very much +1 to the opening section.

Thanks - I may have gone rather off-piste, however... fun to get 
creative though.

Regards

Liam

-- 
Liam McGee
Managing Director
Communis Ltd

t: +44 (0)1373 836 476
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Received on Wednesday, 19 August 2009 11:18:30 UTC