RE: Kynn's Analysis of CD Web Accessibility

Writing in simplified language also looses personal nuance, yet many people
agree that it aids comprehension for the bulk of users to write at a reading
level between 6th and 10th grade. I'm guessing that for many in the CD
community a reading level of 1st to 3rd grade is probably more appropriate.
If I translate Shakespeare to a 3rd grade (or even 10th grade) reading
level, I loose a lot of nuance.  But, if my goal is to tell the story to a
3rd grader, I'll succeed, where I probably won't if I preserve the nuance.
This is exactly the purpose of Cliff's notes. 

Jonathan, can you help me understand how translating to a standardized
iconographic language with a vocabulary of 1000 words is different than
translating to an English vocabulary of similar size (my guess on 3rd grade
reading level)?  

[I'm assuming here that such a language exists or can be created, which is a
pretty substantial assumption.  Please humor me for a minute on this.]

--Cynthia

-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Chetwynd [mailto:jay@peepo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2000 6:23 AM
To: w3c; Kynn Bartlett; Marja-Riitta Koivunen
Subject: Re: Kynn's Analysis of CD Web Accessibility


Re:Private meaning of icons and grammatical context

Marja wrote:
If every designer starts to create their own iconic languages I
would think that it would be confusing. But correct me if I'm wrong.

I definitely think this is wrong.

It really does depend on a context.
In the main in my experience any symbol language requires the user and
mediator to interpret it in the authoring phase.

colors may need to be changed, or one may need to select the exact icon to
represent a particular word as in chair, their is a platonic ideal, but
whilst h will serve a more practiced attempt may confuse if not
representative. equally almost any drawing is better than none. Bliss and
others will always miss personal nuance that contains valuable information.

None the less adapting pages so that thay can be translated into symbolic
language is a very important first step.

Verbs and icons with private or learnt  meanings are a different topic. When
referrring to toolbars the icons have very little grammatical support so
their interpretation is blocked to all.
However in a memorable piece of poetry, almost any relevant graphic will aid
memory.

It is a well known practice of memory masters to use nonsensical
associations to aid recall of number sequences.

Proper names can usually be associated graphically and indeed the Chinese
already have this problem to deal with.

One of my students  is Earl, so the miracle of science(Widget) produces a
picture of an ear.
This may seem nonsensical, however with repetition it is more readily
memorised by the clients than an apparently random letter sequence.
The rules of English pronounciation being somewhat complex, and a little
more so in the UK.

Best wishes


jay@peepo.com

special needs teacher
web accessibility consultant

Received on Thursday, 6 April 2000 23:18:00 UTC