Re: "Sensory modality" in English

An attempt at simplifying even this:

Information must not depend on any particular sense (vision, hearing,
etc) for presentation to the user. The information needs to be available in a
form or forms that allow presentation in whatever form is appropriate for the
user's needs.

(The note is relevant to the question of transforming gracefully for older
technologies - still a seperate guideline, and in my opinion rightly so.)

cheers

Charles

  The data available to the user representing any particular information
  should not all be dependent on one sense (vision, hearing, etc.) for
  presentation to the user.  The data used to represent information must
  either be compatible with client processing alternatives which present to
  different senses, or else data alternatives must be provided which can be
  presented to different senses.  
  
  Note: where the data provided to the user depends on client processing to
  reach the respective senses discussed above, this processing must be
  readily available to the user.


On Sun, 16 Jul 2000, Al Gilman wrote:

  At 10:58 AM 2000-07-16 -0400, Marti wrote:
  
  >Greg's suggestion about "sensory modality" was good but leads us back to the
  >problem of needing to interpret the language (say that again in English
  >please).
  
  To say this in plainer, more universally accessible language it takes more
  words.
  
  [analysis or homework, not plain statement:]
  
  The situation that has to be avoided is the following:  Some information is
  only available to the user and the user's software in a form or forms which
  depend on a unique sense: sight, hearing, touch, etc.  The goal is that for
  all information the user has options as to what sense is used to receive
  the information at the Human-to-Computer interface.  [Ditto for commands
  and actuation means.]
  
  So the key words are:
  
  - sense, as in sight, hearing, smell, etc.
  
  - dependency, a necessary requirement
  
  - unique, only one.
  
  I hope those ideas are sufficiently broadly understood so we can base our
  explanation on them.  If this is true, then the statement of the principle
  could run something like the following:
  
  [attempt at broadly accessible statement a.k.a. plain English:]
  
  The data available to the user representing any particular information
  should not all be dependent on one sense (vision, hearing, etc.) for
  presentation to the user.  The data used to represent information must
  either be compatible with client processing alternatives which present to
  different senses, or else data alternatives must be provided which can be
  presented to different senses.  
  
  Note: where the data provided to the user depends on client processing to
  reach the respective senses discussed above, this processing must be
  readily available to the user.
  
  Al
  

--
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053
Postal: GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001,  Australia

Received on Tuesday, 18 July 2000 18:58:28 UTC