Question from Last Week's WCAG Teleconference

Ian, (interesting 3.1 proposal BTW) there was a discussion regarding
"identifying the equivalency relationships" that related to a
conversation you and I had at Bristol during a break.  The minutes
captured my comments this way:

 >KB This assumption comes with the idea that there is an optimal 
 >presentation. From our work, there are different ways of presenting 
 >information. I don't need to present to a visual user if they have said, 
 >"don't play me sound" to let them know that there is sound here. I spoke 
 >with Ian about this because it sounded odd. He specifically said it has to 
 >be clear in the markup or the data model. It may be on my server - an 
 >explicit representation between this image and this text. He said that as 
 >long as in the data model, I would be covered. This does not have to be sent 
 >to the user.

I don't know if I am accurately portraying your viewpoint on this,
but it's an accurate summary of what I understood at the time.  I feel
that we might have been getting bogged down a bit on this proposal and
missed the "...or in the data model" part in the discussion.

Can you share your views on this with the group, specifically regarding
the question of whether or not the server must -reveal- the equivalency
relationship in markup to the user and/or user agent, if the 
equivalency is clearly identified in the data model used by the server?

(Sample scenario:  I store everything in XML.  My XML tells me that
the markup "<span class='myheaders'>Kynn's Friends</span>" is equal
to the image kyfrie004.jpg.  If I send the markup to a user who has
requested "no images", do I need to identify that it is alternative
text in some way?)

-- 
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                    http://kynn.com/
Director of Accessibility, Edapta               http://www.edapta.com/
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet   http://www.idyllmtn.com/
AWARE Center Director                      http://www.awarecenter.org/
What's on my bookshelf?                         http://kynn.com/books/

Received on Wednesday, 25 October 2000 16:18:24 UTC