- From: TITUS SINGH <titus_singh@hotmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2000 21:01:13 GMT
- To: W3C-WAI-GL@W3C.ORG
I am sorry not to be present, please accept my apologies and my contribution herewith with my best wishes. When creating content for early readers, repetition, illustration, word count and point size are intimately related. Whilst Dr Seuss would not appeal to all, his work, both with illustration and text is known to most. Quentin Blake & Roald Dahl have had a long relationship, as also have Janet and Allan Ahlberg, though they may be less well known. A brief survey of such books published in the last century could no doubt demonstrate an improvement in our understanding of literacy. However the commonalities are perhaps more evident. To author suitable materials requires experience and sensitivity. Scripting and storyboarding are separate disciplines and if we are to enable the individual to author both, whilst developing literacy skills, we will have work to do. There are a number of proprietary authoring programs* that present graphics, as illustrations of words, or word groupings. They inevitably do not have illustrations for every word. A few abstract subjects, some adjectives, most parts of speech and even verbs may prove unsuitable or difficult to illustrate in this manner. The graphics will need to be learnt and this may not be appropriate. <it is easy to imagine situations where the back button will not be interpreted as such> If we attempt to build on the skills of users in a non-didactic manner, the context will be the mediator. The example of games and computer games demonstrates this. Every game has its own rules, and if it is graphical, usually the graphical format is explicit. Altering the graphical design interferes with gameplay too dramatically to be attempted, one may instead design a new game. I am not proposing at this stage that our clients develop games titles, though I should be surprised if they are not involved, once the tools are in place, or under development. Navigating the web is a complex and demanding skill, and one that we all find can be hard to achieve efficiently. It is an essential skill to learn and for this reason it is necessary that suitable sites are linked to external resources. Much curent streaming and multimedia content unfortunately fails on this issue. The user is denied interactivity, or the interactivity is limited to onsite use. There are a growing number of online applications available. Search engines are perhaps currently the most succesful. We can imagine that the mediation of web content will develop over the coming years. Publishers and users will both be concerned to maintain control. People with poor literacy are in the main economically independent. It is a defining experience of adults with learning difficulties that they are financially dependent throughout their lives. Few even have the experience of handling loose change. It is clear that commercial publishers will not be able to validate the creation of suitable sites, in economic terms. Equally teachers and social workers do not have the time, the skills or access to suitable equipment to author and serve such materials. I'd therefore like to suggest that large publishers ensure that 5-10% of their content be suitable for people learning to read. For these reasons I ask you to commend your fellows to design and author suitable materials and set a suitable example for others. I wish to thank Wendy Chisholm for taking the time, to help me define and perhaps clarify my somewhat muddled ideas. For my own attempts, all of which are notably unsuccessful, a variety of graphical browsing environments are at http://www.signbrowser.org.uk, unfortunately the Java version with a 2.2D perspective, is currently offline. My only comment is that they are different attempts to present a variety of offsite resources within an animated or graphical environment, and have been designed for people with under-developed reading skills . * WIDGIT and CLICKER are available in the UK. -- jonathan chetwynd jc@signbrowser.org.uk IT teacher (learning difficulties) & accessibility consultant _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com.
Received on Wednesday, 4 October 2000 17:01:45 UTC