- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2000 09:40:16 -0400 (EDT)
- To: Marja-Riitta Koivunen <marja@w3.org>
- cc: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Yes, communication only works if we are sharing some of the same script. But we usually are - there is a lot of information on the web that is irrelevant or meaningless to me, and I don't care if I have a way to understand it or not. I do care if I have a way to know what something is about, so I can try my scripts on it and see how to understand it. I have a dyslexic relative who couldn't read a book in what we would call real time until he was 25. At that age he could strip down and rebuild, with the aid of a manual, any car engine he came across, and ran a number of large nightclubs in Australia and China, developing training systems, management procedures and manuals, etc. I can stare at appropriately written Thai text for ever, but I will not have any idea what it is about. If there are a few pictures, I will start to understand whether this is something relevant to me, and if I want to do something about finding out what this stuff is. It is not a perfect strategy, but it is the difference between some level of access to the content and none at all. Charles McCN On Mon, 3 Apr 2000, Marja-Riitta Koivunen wrote: At 04:43 AM 4/3/00 -0400, Charles McCathieNevile wrote: >I think an important point is that language is not the thing most central to >communication - having something to communicate is. It seems that many of us, >particularly those who have great skill using written languages, seem to >forget that easily. > To me a visual language is also a language and we do communicate a lot with it. But it needs to be learned otherwise the communication is not easy as so much need to be guessed. >I can go to many countries and get food and drink without speaking any of the >language. Sighted people use images for communication of ideas all the time - >where is the toilet, or the information desk, or what should I do at this >intersection, or how do I put my acme model aeroplane together? > This is because we very much share the same scripts. When you go to a store or a restaurant it has pretty much the same features everywhere, which helps the guessing enormously. [and more sensible stuff]
Received on Monday, 3 April 2000 09:40:22 UTC