principles

Principle 1: All information must be available entirely through visual,
auditory, or tactile methods or in any combination required by the user.

Principle 2: Capture structure and implied meaning (semantics) in markup
or in a data model.

These are going to be somewhat "academic" in tone/content. I think that
brevity is permissible so long as subsequent materials elucidate for
those to whom this sounds "high-falutin'". I recommend leaving out
"implied" and either "meaning" or "semantics". The "implied meaning"
seems to apply (mostly?) to the uses of structure/presentation to convey
semantics. "Content" probably doesn't have markup/datamodel requirements
but structure/presentation does? Thus the "information" in Principle 1
and the "semantics" in 2 must both be revealed in accordance with 1. So
in effect Principle 1 might say that semantics, whether explicit as in
content or implied through structure/presentation must be... The
structure is "information" and the "presentation" might well be. The
general/abstract case is that *all* semantic content must be available.
So in a way Principle 2 would be redundant if Principle 1 were somewhat
expanded?

Principle 3: Design for ease of comprehension, browsing and navigation

I'm having a lot of trouble with this one, particularly with the
inclusion of "browsing" which seems to me to be a subset of
"navigation"? Mainly, I think the directive to "design for ease..." is
essentially impossible to yield agreed-upon methods/goals since "make it
simple but not too simple" implies that for some of us "ease of
comprehension" is hampered by simplisticism.

OTOH I think ease of navigation is indeed quite central to these
guidelines. 

Principle 4: Design user interfaces for device independence

I believe this will be the saving grace of our goal of Universal Design
*if we can provide acceptable/practical/usable guidance*. Perhaps
Bristol will help clarify if we have any chance to continue pursuing
this goal. If stuff like WAP captures a handhold on handhelds it may be
difficult to preclude multiple proprietary Webs in lieu of achieving
accessibility via Principle 4.

Principle 5: Compensate for older technologies and missing or
incompletely implemented features of user agents

I guess I still think this doesn't rise to the level of a "Principle"
since in our ivory tower older technologies are superceded technologies,
failings of user agents are temporary and we don't want to modify the
Principles just because the telephone operators no longer must insert
plugs into some spot on a bank of receptacles or turn a hand crank to
ring one's bell.

This is fun!
-- 
Love.
            ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE
http://dicomp.pair.com

Received on Wednesday, 16 August 2000 11:43:37 UTC