RE: Text equivalents

Jonathan,

I know Gregory can speak for himself, but speaking for myself:

Please refrain from sending to this list statements such as, "your thinking
is all too evidently that of a technician rather than a carer." To me that
smacks of a personal attack, and there is no place for that here. Neither
Gregory nor any of us would take the time to read this list if we didn't
care. Let's stick to the issues.

Dick Brown
Program Manager, Web Accessibility
Microsoft Corp.
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	Jonathan Chetwynd [mailto:jay@peepo.com] 
Sent:	Wednesday, March 15, 2000 9:05 AM
To:	Anne Pemberton; Gregory J. Rosmaita
Cc:	Web Content Accessiblity Guidelines Mailing List
Subject:	Re: Text equivalents

Gregory

your making me a little cross.
You are using your preconceptions about ordering to define a requirement you
know nothing about.

Links by their nature are not predictable.
That is in part the nature of story telling .

To demand that links should go to sound via text is self evidently
ridiculous for a non-readers.
You can work this much out on the fly.

I don't mean to be rude, I get driven to it.
your thinking is all too evidently that of a technician rather than a carer.
Try coding from the perspective of a non reader, and you'll realise that
LYNX is not a product they are likely to use.
In fact if they are browsing unaided its almost certain they must be using 5
or later else its not got enough multimedia to entertain.

OK we'd like our product to suit all needs, but there's precious little
suitable content about, and the great need is for product, cross
compatibility is not an issue.


jay@peepo.com

Jonathan Chetwynd
special needs teacher and
web accessibility consultant.
----- Original Message -----
From: Gregory J. Rosmaita <unagi69@concentric.net>
To: Anne Pemberton <apembert@crosslink.net>
Cc: Web Content Accessiblity Guidelines Mailing List <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2000 12:30 AM
Subject: Re: Text equivalents


> aloha, anne!
>
> while you made several salient and valuable points in your initial post
and
> your reply to william, the page which you referenced in your reply to
william:
> http://www.ih.k12.oh.us/ps/americana/Eberle/EBsongs.htm
>
> is a poor example for several reasons:
>
> 1. there is no prior indication that following a link will load a WAV file
> -- why don't the pages point to transcriptions of the songs, which contain
> a link which is clearly marked as referencing an audio clip (additional
> information that would be useful would be the format of the audio file, as
> well as the file size and approximate playing time) -- in that wise, a
> child who is deaf or who is using a computer without a sound card (or
> support for the proprietary format) could obtain the same information that
> other children ostensively obtain when they listen to the audio
> clips...  this is also true of the link whose hyperlink text is "The
> Star-Spangled Banner" -- there is nothing about the link (save for the
> HREF) which identifies it as linking to a WAV file
>
> 2. there are no textual equivalents for the songs (i.e. transcripts of the
> songs for those who cannot hear the WAV files)
>
> 3. the names of the persons whose pictures appear on the page are only
> visually slash spatially associated with the pictures, and there are no
> explicit captions associated with them, so unless you can see them
rendered
> exactly the way the designer of the page intended them to be rendered
> (using a TABLE for layout purposes), they are actually quite useless...
if
> you doubt the validity of that last claim, try, for example, viewing the
> page with Lynx, and you will see how easily a Lynx user might
mis-interpret
> the pseudo-caption as referring to the Lynx-generated placeholder, [LINK],
> which follows most of the names when the table is linearized..   there are
> several ways that a stronger, more explicit association could have been
> defined for the graphic and its caption -- many of which are included in
> the WCAG techniques document
>
> 4. none of the graphical hyperlinks on the page utilize ALT text, nor do
> they provide LONGDESCs or D-links to describe the images (a blind or
> deafblind child might, for example, want to know what george washington or
> susan b. anthony looked like)
>
> gregory
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> He that lives on Hope, dies farting
>       -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1763
> --------------------------------------------------------
> Gregory J. Rosmaita <unagi69@concentric.net>
>     WebMaster and Minister of Propaganda, VICUG NYC
>          <http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/vicug/index.html>
> --------------------------------------------------------
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 15 March 2000 14:06:30 UTC