- From: William Loughborough <love26@gorge.net>
- Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2000 12:15:29 -0700
- To: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
AG:: "...the root principle is to provide the user with options." WL: Perhaps if we put the "separate content/structure/presentation" as the first principle we might find that the "root principle" changes us into thinking about the semantics of Webstuff rather than its ultimate implementation. What we mean to get across is at the very root of it all. We are taking the position that there's an underlying something to be communicated that can be done in many ways if the author takes care that her uses of various elements is both cross-modality and cross-cultural. Our much-remarked linguistic chauvinism often makes us forget that the strains of "Dixie" have a different meaning to different folks. While it is true that this imposes burdens on content creators, it is also what the exercise is all about. Awareness of the need for "informational curb-cuts" will require the fundamental change in how we approach communication that has become necessary. It's the "everything" with which "everyone" is connected. We will always have to make exclusionary decisions - a newborn infant will probably not be able to (within a "reasonable" length of time) fully comprehend essays on the semantics of "program music". We (so far) have taken the position that a *minimum* conformance with our principles means that were she still with us, Helen Keller could be privy to our "content". The words we search for to engrave on the headstones of "principles" are probably "in there somewhere". Finding if we can get away from "modality" and others will consume us for a bit. Weaving a "semantic Web" without using the word "semantic" might prove divisive in the general sense. It is going to be hard for many who truly believe that their paintings communicate *in the same sense* as do words that there is such a thing as "content" somehow separable from "presentation" - or that "structure" is a concept with meaning in a universe whose apparent main characteristic is chaos - since we are operating on a small island of negative entropy. Many of us are so concerned with preventing women from voting and Native Americans playing on a basketball team with Lithuanians that we go to war "on principle". This is why it is not off-topic to keep harping on the idea of there being agree-uponable "principles" at an even higher level than those we dissect (endlessly?) here. Such as "we're all in this together and members of one another" which has led us to: ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE Love.
Received on Sunday, 16 July 2000 15:16:12 UTC