Regrets and Comment on Initial draft

Wendy,

Not sure I need to send regrets since I am not really a member of the working
group.  I do want to participate in the cognitive issues work but cannot join
today's phone conference.

I did take a look at the initial draft document aligning disability categories
with the checkpoints and feel that it moves the work in a useful direction.  I
am concerned about the multilayered approach to establishing priorities and
find it difficult to imagine that most web developers will want that much
detail.  It seems more likely that a small set of issues related to disability
should be attended to and might then be explained in the FAQ type document.  A
limited number of items might then be considered for future versions of the
content guidelines.

I also suspect that it will be difficult to separate impact from purpose.  For
example, if the intent of a website is to simply provide information, then the
importance of a particular checkpoint might differ from one that wants the
"user" to take action, learn something new, apply what is learned to some new
endeavor, or perhaps be entertained.

As you know, many of the critical concerns overlap various categorical labels
for disabilities.  Labels or categories that I might find useful would
include:
1. Attention / Concentration
2. Memory
   a. Procedural (how to do something)
   b. Semantic (perception, storage and retrieval of information and events)
3. Language
   a. Oral (receptive and expressive)
   b. Written (including low level readers, non-readers and written
expression)
4. Organization
   a. Visual / Spatial
   b. Temporal / Sequential
5. Higher Order Thinking (including problem solving)
6. Affect / Emotion
7. Metacognition
   a. Self-monitoring
   b. Analytical thinking
   c. Practical thinking
   d. Creative thinking

This is probably a bit too much detail for this purpose but the headings next
to the numbers could be used as the critical topics.

There are other embedded issues like rate or pace of processing and responding
or providing options or choices for those who need to be in control of the
information or learning environment.  We have also been discussing specifics
like readability and challenge or resistance.  Under organization issues like
orientation come to mind (where am I on the page or site, what are my choices
right now?).

Obviously I have not attended to the sensory and physical issues and, of
course, they are no less important.

Chuck

Received on Thursday, 12 August 1999 15:56:00 UTC