- From: Greg Gay <g.gay@utoronto.ca>
- Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 13:05:41 -0500
- To: Charles McCathieNevile <charlesn@srl.rmit.EDU.AU>
- CC: Gregg Vanderheiden <po@trace.wisc.edu>, "'GL - WAI Guidelines WG'" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Hello Charles I don't think priorities should be eliminated altogether but perhaps re-thought through. There are certain fundamental practices, like including ALT text for images, which should carry more weight than the practice of say, including ALT text for objects, simply because images are the most common accessibility barrier and everyone should be familiar with the problems they pose for adaptive technology users. We are currently developing a tool for measuring the extent to which web authoring tools promote accessibility (HTML editors and conversion tools, and web based course authoring packages) . We have found that promotion of accessibility must be measured in relation to a product's functionality. To accomplish this, priorities were used to add weight to the more fundemental practices, awarding or penalizing products for providing provisions for them or not. For example, a product is awarded more points for providing a way to include ALT text with images than for providing a way to include ALT text for Objects. Likewise they are penalized more for not providing a way to add ALT text to images than they are for not providing a way to add ALT text to objects. With regard to functionality, products are awarded points for providing tools to create various components of Web pages and are assessed on the extent to which those particular tools promote accessibility. The results provide three scores, functionality, accessibility, and the ratio between the two. I agree that a weighting scheme should be discussed. As our measurement tool currently exists, based on the WAI guidelines, I am not convinced that all of the priorities have been weighted appropriately. I will make a copy of the Excel measurement tool and its accompanying documentation available for anyone interested in providing input into it's development. Charles McCathieNevile wrote: > I think then we are left with a list of guidelines to be followed, all > effectively P1. There are techniques. Where they are relevant the > importance of using that technique has a priority. I think we should say > something like this in the document if we do remove priorites. > > Charles McCathieNevile > > On Tue, 17 Nov 1998, Gregg Vanderheiden wrote: > > > This is a proposal from the editors that we remove the priorities from the > > guidelines and just have priorities on the techniques. -- Greg Gay Adaptive Technology Resource Centre University of Toronto SNOW Project Site Facilitator http://snow.utoronto.ca
Received on Wednesday, 18 November 1998 13:06:39 UTC