- From: William Loughborough <love26@gorge.net>
- Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2000 08:54:31 -0700
- To: gl <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
"CSS Guideline 1.1 Provide a textual equivalent for every non-text (auditory or graphical) component or multimedia presentation. For CSS, this applies to use of color? Generated text? Aural cascading style sheets? Does it apply at all?" WL: I think this is where we must deal with the point raised about those of us who tend to use presentation semantically through the side door of making a "sounds meaningful" class distinction among stylized elements. The old .warning class of <EM> situation. "HTML Guideline 1.1... Provide any of this information within the content of the document." WL: Of course this latter technique is applicable to the CSS one above. Unfortunately most authors will feel put upon to be urged to use this for *everything*. First they're given a method of styling that is supposed to help with the problem only to find that they still must explain that this particular style variety is being used to convey some detail of the semantic intent. "You mean that if I want to have degrees of emphasis that I must explain them instead of just showing them?" "Mark up lists and list items properly" is probably also needed in the CSS examples because there is always the temptation to use <LI>, etc. as CSS entries in order to convey gradations of semantics. I suppose we could write an essay on just how dependent we blindless people have become on using presentation expressively. Although we like to pretend that there's "pure" presentation items, in fact *most* uses of "style" are reflections of voice inflections, etc. that aren't a regular part of printed text. The question mark and other punctuations are actually markup elements that direct one to read the passage aloud in a certain way - flying in the face of the notion that presentation and content aren't joined at the hip. "Avoid using images to represent text -- use markup and style sheets instead" pulls my chain almost as much as it will J. Chetwynd's! If what is meant is to "Avoid using images OF text" I understand it but I think "representing" is more like "illuminating" than "replacing"? In fact in some cases we should probably be encouraging image use in connection with text representation - after all text is actually a visual represntation of speech. "Guideline 2.3 Where presentation is used to communicate distinctions of meaning or structure within the content, ensure that the meaning is captured in the markup." WL: As noted above the question becomes *HOW?*. The markup isn't sufficiently "rich" to capture the nuances of meaning in many cases - it would be too cumbersome, I think. When you read any of these sentences aloud note how their semantics is affected merely by which word you emphasize. If I were to emphasize "you" in the previous sentence it would be interpreted to mean as a statement about how this is a function of a particular person whereas if I emphasize "semantics" I imply that other features than their meaning are not affected, etc. etc. This would be tedious to do in markup. Guideline 2.5 Ensure that distinctions needed to the render the content auditorally or tactiely are captured in the markup."[there's a gratuitous "the" in there] WL: Again more guidance on how the markup can capture these distinctions. The technique of elucidating these nuances in content might be hard to sell. "Guideline 3.4 Divide large blocks of information into groups where natural and appropriate." WL: Each of these guidelines might require an extensive tutorial in what's "natural and appropriate"? Very few authors understand the reasons for structure: "I'm not going to have a ToC!" "Guideline 5.1 Make sure that the use of newer technologies transform gracefully when a browser does not support the technology or the technology is not enabled in the user's configuration." WL: I've always been troubled by "transform gracefully" which has a nice ring to it but if I'm not mistaken what it means is that whatever you're trying to do disappears without messing things up when the browser provides no support for it? ENOUGH!
Received on Wednesday, 23 August 2000 12:52:38 UTC