Some Comments on the Latest Techniques Draft an WCAG Minutes

I think the editors have done a great job with the revision of the
techniques!

I have a couple of small points re the most recent WCAG minutes

The minutes said to add heading or describption of check points instead of
number - I think it should probably be in addition to the checkpoint number,
which is important also.

I have had strong interest in PDF accessibility, or its relative lack of
accessibility, so would be interested in helping out in that area, while I
get my head around the broader and more technical WAI issues.  I want to be
contributing something to the group, but I'd prefer to volunteer initially
in an area which I've given a lot of thought to, and which I understand
relatively well.

Can you tell me who the initials MM is, who agreed to do some work on PDF -
but I must have missed that specific action in the meeting.

Not in the Minutes were two small points re the techniques that came in the
meeting:

1. expanding the table of contents to include the TOC for other modules
making up the set.

2. I suggested some more information up-front in the techniques documents
explaining how the interrelate with one-another.  I was quite confused for a
while trying to get a sense of how the modules all interact
withone-another - actually I am still a little fuzzy on this.

These next points are not thoroughly thought through yet, but I wanted to
get the issues on the table for discussion.

This is an expansion of some of my comments in the meeting, and takes into
consideration some comments made by Charles in the meeting.   .

It boils down to the whole question of structure of the techniques, whether
and how to split sections out etc.  Note that I wasn't involved when the
breaking out discussion and background came up, and I'm still getting a good
handle on the extent of the techniques etc.  I'm certainly not advocating
reversing any decissions, or saying that I think we shouldn't have separate
modules!

Anyway, here are my thoughts and a couple of general questions:

I think the WAI Content materials are very good, but I do get a lot of
feedback about readability structure etc by people who aren't overly
technical - I think the work you've doing in filling out the techniques and
making sure there aren't too many essential links that have to be followed
in order to understand them, will go a long way to improving the usefulness
of the materials.  Including checkpoint summaries helps a lot, cause you
don't get side-lined when reading, and the information makes more sense.

A lot of sighted people automatically want to be able to [print a document
out, for reading on the train etc etc, and as a blind person I do the same
thing, taking documents off-line into my braille 'n speak or RoadRunner, to
make the best use of my limited time.

It is for this reason that I'm pushing for reference documents which might
have substantial hypertext links, but which can also be accessed in a
relatively linia fashion.

For me, the overal length of the document isn't a concern, nor is moving to
different sections of the same document to get additional information. - for
me, same page links don't cause me problems, but having to jump to lots of
separate documents do have the potential to reduce my effective reading -
unless I'm online.

I realise this is somewhat ironic, considering the nature of the subject
under discussion - name hypertext - but the guidelines and techniques need
to be "out there" in the hands of developers and that may mean keeping some
focus on relative self-containment.

I don't know if my comments create problems with the idea - and all the work
done already - to split the techniques out by language etc - to be honest
I'm not sure where I stand on this point, but I see the value in people not
having to read reems and reems of techniques that don't apply to their
implementation decissions.

I have to admit that In starting to read the HTML document stand-alone, I
didn't find that it meant a great deal for the first few screens - tables
and so on, that didn't have a lot of context.

Did I just not read far enough?  Or, is the document just a supplement that
is linked across to when you are at a particular checkpoint or guideline?

In either case, your suggestion in the meeting to expand the table of
contents in the primary document to include toc for the other modules, and
my suggestion to add some extra information up front of the documents
explaining the interrelationship between the different documents that make
up the set I think would be very helpful.

I'm only asking these questions to give you a sense of where I'm coming
from, as I wasn't involved in the lead-up discussions resulting in a
decission to break out some sections, and don't have a problem as such with
that decission.  Already I think the techniques are *much* better than the
published versions to date, which probably wouldn't have happened so
significantly without the work to split modules out.

Thats about it on this subject from me for now

Thanks
Tim Noonan

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org]On
Behalf Of Wendy A Chisholm
Sent: Friday, 18 February 2000 9:24 AM
To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: Reminders and Minutes from 17 February 2000


Hel	lo,

The minutes are available at:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/meetings/20000217.html

Note the Summary of action items (included below) and resolutions that we
hope to see progress on by next week's meeting!

And, don't forget:
1. to register for the Face2Face on March 20th in L.A. Info is available at
http://www.w3.org/WAI/2000/03/agenda.html (you have a little less than one
month to register)
2. to rejoin the working group.  refer to the "how to join" page at:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/howto-join-wg.html
3. to comment on the latest draft of the techniques document available at:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WD-WCAG10-TECHS-20000211/


Summary of action items and resolutions from 17 February meeting

WC add "title" to checkpoints, use this in the "checkpoints in thissection"
rather than numbers OR make the headings more specific.

WL go through CSS note to determine what should be incorporated into theCSS
module.

CMN go through checkpoints to see where they apply to SVG.

WC go through SMIL note to see what we want to incorporate into teh
techniques document.

Resolution: in techniques document e.g., under checkpoint 1.1 where it
says, "provide alt-text for image" (in HTML module) say "where can include
multimedia, allow author to provide text equivalent" (in XML module).

MM work on PDF issues and techniques.

WC follow-up on Flash techniques with Rob Neff.

be well,
--wendy
--
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
madison, wi usa
tel: +1 608 663 6346
/--

Received on Monday, 21 February 2000 16:16:57 UTC