Re: General Exception for Essential Purpose

At 03:17 PM 10/28/2000 , Leonard R. Kasday wrote:
>Consider
>the set of all user groups U1, U2, U3... with different sets of abilities and disabilities.

Okay.

>and the guidelines UA and GL for user agents and web content.

>1. Is the goal of WAI to produce UA and GL guidelines such that if both are followed in their entirety, than each user groups U1, U2, U3... will have available maxium feasible access to all web sites?  Here "maxium feasible" means the maxium that can be obtained with current knowledge and technology?

I don't know if my word can be accepted as gospel, but here's
how I see it.  (I'm just one person and the issue of multiple
interfaces is a relatively new topic.)

The goal of the guidelines is to identify what the needs are,
and identify techniques to meet these needs.

One way to meet the needs of users is to provide alternate user
interfaces.  This is a technique.  Another way to meet their needs
is to provide a "universally accessible, single source, degrades
gracefully" interface.  This is also a technique.  (This was the
primary technique espoused for WCAG 1.0, which was written at a
time in which alternate interface technology was not mature enough
to be feasible; thus the "as a last resort" phrasing.)

As multiple user interfaces _are_ a technical reality (as Cynthia
has noted recently here), we need to have guidelines which address
both that situation and the single interface scenarios.  This is
doable because we are identifying needs and the requirements for
solutions in the guidelines, and "multiple interfaces vs. single
interface" is actually a technique-level discussion not a
guideline-level one.

(This is why I will sometimes try to address these points in 
discussions of checkpoints or guidelines -- because it's easy to
think only of single interface, since we've done it for so long,
but we don't want to count out the advantages of multiple
interfaces.)

To get back to the original question, I believe that it is not
possible to write a guideline which allows for all user groups to
have optimal accessibility (and usability) without the use of
alternate interfaces, especially once we factor in authors'
needs.  (It may be theoretically possible to write a document which
gives moderately good overall accessibility which nobody would
want to follow -- in fact, I think that is the case with Triple-A
WCAG 1.0!)

After a while it becomes impossible to balance all of the needs
against each other within a single source; thus the need for well-
done multiple interfaces.  WCAG 1.0 had this concept as well,
but relegated it to an "unencouraged" status.

I expect that if someone were to follow -- within the boundaries of
the available technologies -- the guidelines produced by this group,
then the interfaces built should be the most accessible possible.
If they're not, we've failed in our task.

The role of multiple interfaces is to extend those "boundaries of
the available technologies" -- not to change the requirements.

>2. And is it completely acceptable to fulfill this goal by providing each of the user groups U1, U2, U3,.... with different versions of the site S1, S2, S3... ?

Yes.

>If at all possible, please answer with one of the following
>- "yes"
>- "no"
>- "what  _are_  you talking about Lenny?"  <grin/>
>or offer rephrasings of a sentence or two (with or without math-ese) to which you can say "yes".

Okay. :)  I answered one question with a one-worder, at least!

>p.s.
>Also, if this is the philosophy, I don't understand where Kynn's "minimally accessible" fallback fits in.

It's not a result of the philosophy, it's a technique for doing
multiple interfaces (which is a technique, or a meta-technique,
itself).

In theory, to meet the needs of U1, U2, ... Un, you'll need to be
able to perfectly describe the capabilities of those groups (or allow
them to do it themselves) and also have perfect knowledge of how to
best meet their needs.

In practice, this can be difficult, especially as the size of the
U1, U2, ... Un set is increasing and changing.  So someone using the
multiple interface approach is still going to need to answer the
riddle of "how do I meet the needs of someone who isn't in the
subset of U1...Un which I've identified?"

The most logical technique to do this is to create an accessible
fallback designed as a "single interface" solution which is actually
one of a group of multiple solutions.

This begs the question "why have multiple interface solutions at all
if you already have an accessible single interface?"  This is because
the very nature of a single interface solution limits you in how
accessible (and usable) you can make the site.  It is a compromise
solution, not an optimized solution, and as such it will be "inferior"
in both theory and practice.

--Kynn

-- 
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 Saturday, 28 October 2000 20:59:41 UTC