Naming and wording

I don't know where we currently stand on this issue of renaming the PA
guidelines into something else, but if Universal Design is going to be
the focus (and I think it should be), then we need a minimum
rewordsmithing of the text in the guidelines, to put the rationales
emphasis in our rationales on Universal Design first, with mention of
accessibility for People with Disabilities as an aspect of UD.

For instance, where it says in the abstract:

  This document is a list of guidelines that page authors should
  follow in order to make their pages more accessible for people with
  disabilities as well as more useful to other users, new page viewing
  technologies (mobile and voice), and electronic agents such as
  indexing robots.

it should instead say something like

  This document is a list of guidelines that page authors should
  follow in order to make their pages more accessible to all users
  regardless of the device they use: graphical, aural, braille,
  character-based, etc. This is known as Universal Design and benefits 
  people with disabilities as well as users of new technologies such
  as mobile phone, and electronic agents based on text such as
  indexing robots. 

Or in A.1, where it says:

  If alternative text is not provided, users who are blind, have low
  vision, or any user who cannot or has chosen not to view graphics will
  not know the purpose of the visual components on the page.

it could be

  If alternative text is not provided, users who cannot or have chosen
  not to view graphics, such as web-phone or blind users, will not
  know the purpose of the visual components on the page.

A.3:

  Otherwise, users who are deaf, or hard of hearing, or any user who
  cannot or has chosen not to hear sound cannot perceive the information
  presented through speech, sound effects, music, etc.
 
could become

  Otherwise, users who cannot or have chosen not to hear sound, such
  as noisy environment or deaf users, will not be able to perceive the
  information presented through speech, sound effects, music, etc.

etc


I don't think this requires a lot of work, and my hope is that this
will make our guidelines more readily usable by other communities such
as the Mobile Web Access people for instance, which will in turn
greatly favor their adoption by content producers.


For the title, I suggest: 
  Web Content Universal Design Guidelines.

Received on Monday, 23 November 1998 05:13:43 UTC