Rewording for the masses

Yesterday, Jason solicited suggestions on improving the wording of the the
WCAG 2.0 guidelines draft to be more understandable. After thinking about
this for a day, here are some ideas for Principles 1 and 2:

Principle 1: Provide a text equivalent for any non-text element. I think
Principle 1 as currently stated is really the rationale for why text
equivalents are required for accessibility.

1.1 Provide a description for each image.
1.2 Provide a transcript for audio content.
1.3 Provide synchronized captions of the audio portion of a multimedia
presentation if it is required for understanding. Otherwise, provide a
transcript of the audio. For example, an animated tutorial video with audio
descriptions of the animation should provide synchronized text captions.
For a simple video of a person giving a speech, it is sufficient to provide
a text transcript of the speech.
1.4 Provide synchronized audio descriptions of the video portion of a
multimedia presentation if is is required for understanding. For example, a
video of a classroom lecture should provide synchronized audio descriptions
of visual materials used that are not described in the lecture audio. A
video of a person giving a speech does not require an audio description.

Principle 2: Provide meaningful structure, not just presentation
instructions.

2.1 Use standard markup languages and data models. For example, use XHTML
that validates to the XHTML specification. Do not use non-standard
extensions.
2.2 Use markup elements to identify the type of content being presented,
not to control presentation. For example, use the HTML <blockquote> tag to
identify quotations, not to achieve paragraph indentation.
2.3 Use style languages to control presentation. For example, to control
the background color and font in HTML table cells, use CSS to define one
style class for header cells and a different style class for data cells.
2.4 Use presentation to enhance meaning but not as the only means to
understand it. For example, in a list, identify new items by including the
word "new" at the beginning or end of the item text and display them in a
different color. In this case, color is used to enhance the distinction,
not as the only indentification of it.
2.5 Use markup elements to identify changes in context. For example, use
markup to identify changes in the natural language of a document or to
distinguish fragments of mathematical notation or computer program code
from the surrounding text.


Andi
andisnow@us.ibm.com
IBM Accessibility Center - Special Needs Systems
(512) 838-9903, http://www.ibm.com/able
Internal Tie Line 678-9903, http://w3.austin.ibm.com/~snsinfo

Received on Friday, 25 August 2000 14:49:51 UTC