Re: is this the best approach?

In general I think this is a great idea. I do wonder how much influence we
could really have on others documentation. This week I started my action
item by reading what Adobe had to say at http://access.adobe.com and
ell,  - hmm I guess I better not say most of what I am thinking.
Marti


> 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 15:32:36 UTC