Adding a "summary of the issues" section

Is there a need to introduce a section in the appendix of the guidelines
which briefly introduces assistive technology for the benefit of HTML
authors who, for the most part, would be unaware of its nature and
function in enabling people with certain types of disabilities to access
the web? Further, such an explanatory section could briefly outline the
"universal design" idea and emphasise the broad range of devices which
people may choose to use, whether due to a disability or other
circumstance, as an interface to the web. Gregg wrote an excellent paper
on this subject which appears in the electronic proceedings of the WWW6
conference. Although I would not consider a detailed discussion of these
issues to be appropriate in the guidelines, a few paragraphs of
explanation would surely be helpful, especially if it is expected that the
page author guidelines will proceed to W3C recommendation status without
the central reference document's becoming a W3C recommendation
simultaneously with them.

My specific proposal would be: divide the current appendix into four
separate appendices. Three of these comprise the present Appendix, with
checklist, acknowledgments and references; but a fourth gives a brief
introduction to the issues for authors who are unfamiliar with the
technology.

Received on Wednesday, 4 February 1998 17:17:31 UTC