Re: Accessibility page for beta.w3.org - questions for EOWG

Hi Shawn

This 20/Aug draft is looking pretty good to me, though I have a few 
comments and suggestions below.

Shawn Henry wrote:
> Thanks for the comments and for feeding the discussion, Shadi. Replies 
> below, including *questions for EOWG*.
> 
> Shadi Abou-Zahra wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> This update is much better in my opinion. Some questions:
> 
> Good. It's still an early draft and needs lots of work. More opinions, 
> comments, and questions encouraged from all.
> 
>> # "Accessibility is about not disabling people" - interesting word 
>> play though a little unexpected. In formal settings I often hear the 
>> term "excluding" rather than "disabling". Will this term work in a 
>> general setting? Will people understand the idea behind it?
> 
> I was going for unexpected in this draft, for discussion. <grin> These 
> are good questions.
> 
> EOWG folks, what do you think? The full sentence is: "Accessibility is 
> about not disabling people from using your website because they can't 
> hear, move, see, or understand well."

I personally had trouble parsing "Accessibility is about not disabling 
people ..." compared with "excluding". I see what you're trying to do, 
but had to re-read to get the sense. I think the problem is with "not" 
followed by "disabled".

How about "The Web can disable people from accessing online information 
and services, accessibility is about enabling access regardless of 
whether they can hear, move, see, or understand well."

> fyi, Liam's draft said: "Inaccessible web pages are badly written. They 
> disable people. "
> 
>> # Examples - the alt-text example is quite lengthy and explains some 
>> of the auxiliary benefits but the others don't. Is that a bug or feature?
> 
> The transcript one does: "as well as to search engines and other 
> technologies that can't hear.".
> 
>> I'd personally prefer few sentences *with links to related documents* 
>> about these carry-over benefits (such as to mobile resources etc).
> 
> I agree in principle. However, we don't have a short explanation of the 
> other benefits of alt text or other short bits to link to. All we have 
> is the mobile overlap document, but that's focused differently and only 
> on one point.
> 
> Are you proposing that we create a new document(s)? (We do have on the 
> future deliverables list the possibility of a slideset for the business 
> case. Perhaps one of the slides would have this info... but it won't be 
> available for some time.)
> 
> Shadi & EOWG: Ideas on how to address this in the short-term?

Maybe mention that search engines and many mobile devices don't use a 
mouse either? Then all examples have some additional benefits.

I think part of the issue is the increased visibility of the auxiliary 
benefits for alt-text due to the H4.

Maybe try pulling them all together at the end of examples with an H3 
"Benefits and Best Practices" as an alternative approach? or just drop 
the H4?

>> # Keyboard Image - how about an image of a public information kiosk? I 
>> know that accessibility is not about getting a kiosk to work but the 
>> device independence aspect could be clarified that way (and further 
>> underline the carry-over benefits of accessibility).
> 
> hum - Nice example of ubiquitous web; however, I think many would miss 
> it, not knowing the web is used on kiosks. EOWG folks: What is your 
> perspective on this point?

Plenty around Bristol for email use and access to local information, but 
I tend to agree that people may not associate them with the Web (partly 
because they don't look like computers).

> ~Shawn
> 
>> Best,
>>  Shadi

A couple of other suggestions/comments:

# Section "Make your Website Accessible"
- change "are even easier" to "are much easier" in the first sentence to 
increase the emphasis?
- Should we mention authoring tools (and CMS's) in the "not well 
integrated" sentence too? (I know it comes a little later, but seems 
pertinent here.)

# Section "WAI at W3C"
I did like Liam's inclusion of "brings together people from industry, 
disability organisations, government and research labs" to indicate who 
is involved in developing the "strategies, guidelines, and resources".

Andrew

>> Shawn Henry wrote:
>>> EOWG,
>>>
>>> New rough concept drafts of the Accessibility page for beta.w3.org 
>>> are now available. *These are rough, unapproved ideas for 
>>> discussion*. Please focus on overall issues (not detailed 
>>> "wordsmithing") and realize these are individuals' ideas that are no 
>>> where near agreement or completion.
>>>
>>> Please use the Analysis and Changelog page as your main page for this 
>>> work. It is: 
>>> http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/changelogs/cl-2009-w3c-site-redesign
>>>
>>> * See that the goals and audiences are different from most of the WAI 
>>> pages.
>>>
>>> * The first link is to the Accessibility page - latest version.
>>>
>>> * Right under there are links to examples HTML & CSS, 
>>> Internationalization. Skimming through those you can see the type of 
>>> information we might want to cover. Also note that much of the 
>>> wrapper is a template defined by the W3C website redesign.
>>>
>>> * Previous drafts, links to minutes, email threads, and such are 
>>> under "References and version notes". There are three very different 
>>> drafts since last Friday:
>>> - "17 Aug 2009 draft - a universality experimental version" is 
>>> playing with the broader view of universality. Note that we are not 
>>> planning to make this shift, yet the draft was an interesting 
>>> exercise based on the 14 EOWG teleconference discussion.
>>> - "18 Aug 2009 draft L - the minimalist version" is another 
>>> perspective resulting from that discussion. (note that, while 
>>> eloquent, this one doesn't use the current beta.w3.org template 
>>> design, as noted in previous email)
>>> - "14-18 Aug EOWG mailing list archives" has several e-mails that are 
>>> relevant, with subject "Re: stab at betaw3"
>>>
>>> Please look over these drafts, and the latest at 
>>> http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/4betaW3org/accessibility-new-w3c
>>>
>>> Feel free to send comments to the list and/or prepare for discussion 
>>> at the upcoming EOWG teleconference.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> ~Shawn
>>>
>>>
>>> -----
>>> Shawn Lawton Henry
>>> W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
>>> e-mail: shawn@w3.org
>>> phone: +1.617.395.7664
>>> about: http://www.w3.org/People/Shawn/
>>>
>>>
>>
>

Received on Thursday, 20 August 2009 13:59:39 UTC