is this the best approach?

I'm working on my action item from last week: what should we incorporate 
from the SMIL access note into a SMIL module for the techniques document.

The SMIL access note is very well written.  I compared it to the SMIL 1.0 
spec.  The spec describes accessibility all over the place.  I like that 
the SMIL note brings it into one place and creates a context for accessibility.

But, what are authors really going to use?  I think they will use the 
tutorials that are pointed to from the SMIL page.  The two that I looked at 
do not mention accessibility.  They don't even use the word "caption" and 
leave out the system-caption attribute where they mention the other system 
attributes.

yikes.

The authoring tools working group is working with companies to incorporate 
accessibility into existing tools.  The user agent working group is working 
with companies to incorporate accessibility into existing user agents.

perhaps our job is to work with documentation developers to incorporate 
accessibility into existing documentation?

look at the effort it takes, not only for us but for authors, to create our 
own documentation:
1. we have to learn about, write, test and maintain the techniques in our 
own documents.
2. we have to raise awareness that the documents exist.
3. authors have to learn from one source what to do, then *unlearn* many of 
those things when they come to our stuff.
4. our stuff is a separate thing.  it requires an author to read more than 
one document.  is that likely to happen?

The Guidelines need to exist because AU and UA point to them.  They 
establish a good baseline that techniques, from a variety of sources, can 
point to. It is a great work (that still needs some polishing).  But I'm 
wondering if instead of putting our effort into creating all these new 
techniques modules, perhaps we would get more bang for the buck if we 
worked with existing documents to incorporate accessibility.

Then our techniques document would be lists of pointers to examples, 
tutorials, and other documents whose authors we have worked with to include 
accessibility.

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

Received on Thursday, 24 February 2000 15:22:52 UTC