Re: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Ian Jacobs wrote:
> 
> Warner ten Kate wrote:
> >

> > I have one comment in that the Introduction suggests
> > the guidelines concern any type of access, ie. not
> > only improvement of access by disabled persons, but
> > also access through constrained devices or access
> > under special circumstances.

> Your point is well-taken. The introduction has been
> designed to tell authors that designing with accessibility
> in mind will help them produce pages that transform
> gracefully in a number of situations. The priorities, however,
> reflect needs of people with disabilities. While it may be
> true that a Priority 1 checkpoint such as 1.1 ("Provide
> text equivalents for all images") will benefit a number
> of user classes, search robots, etc. , the priority
> was assigned because of accessibility needs.

Yes, that's what I interpreted. 
My comment was that this might be made more explicit.
Maybe the bullet list comes to early in the section, and confused me.


> 
> > As another example, when requiring captioning
> > to assist audio streams, I am missing a guideline
> > on the language of that captioning. I guess,
> > implicitly, there is the assumption that the
> > audio (and captioning) are authored for a certain
> > target audience (speaking some language), of which
> > a part is disabled in their sensory perception.
> 
> Can you explain what you mean by a "guideline
> on the language of the captioning"? Do you mean

This was to illustrate that "implicitly" (in my reading) 
the guidelines are concerned with access by disabled. 
When meant to support wider access in a general sense, 
I think the language of the captioning should also be 
considered. For example, here in The Netherlands most 
movies with foreign speech are subtitled in Dutch.


> > - checkpoint 4.1:
> >   I agree with this one, but I like to mention that sometimes
> >   color can enhance the message, but is acceptable when lost,
> >   eg. upon printing (recall, that in such cases the device
> >   can opt for other solutions to present the information).
> 
> Please explain how you would change the wording of the checkpoint:
> 
>    Ensure that all information conveyed with color is
>    also available without color, for example from context or markup.

Yes, it is hard to find something better. What about:

- Ensure that all essential information....
  [this is countered as bearing a subjective value]
- ......coveyed with color other than enhancing the expressiveness 
  [not sure, this is proper english]


Warner.

Received on Thursday, 11 March 1999 16:48:19 UTC