Re: General Exception for Essential Purpose

As I understand it, the answer to all these scenarios is that it is OK to use
the image of the chilly font, so long as an alternative version of the page
is provided (and is accessible). The exception might be the corporate logo,
based on the argument that the text content is not relevant, but the graphic
device is the content, and so that may not require an alternative version of
the text content per se (although a text equivalent of the identifying mark
is required).

The result might be some more pages on the web that are not accessible. There
is an argument to be made that if something is ont accessibloe it should not
be available at all, and a counter argument that making information available
to some people is better than hiding it from everyone. I think that argument
is outside our scope, which is to work out how to make sure everything can be
accessible. And I think it is a mistake to label anything that is common as
accessible just so we can claim that everything is now accessible.

cheers

Charles McCN

On Fri, 27 Oct 2000, Leonard R. Kasday wrote:

  Ian,
  
  To help me understand your point of view, would you say whether , for each 
  of the cases I described, graphic text should be allowed and whether an 
  alternative page is needed or not?  I repeat them below for convenience.
  
  Here, "chilly font" is a font with icicles dripping from the letters, 
  that's hard to read for people with low vision even with 
  magnification.  However, it is not copyrighted, or part of a logo.
  
  ----
  
  1. a site teaching kids to read, where the word "cold" is written in chilly 
  font.
  font ok?
  alt page needed?
  
  2. a schedule of public meetings of a township zoning board, where all the 
  winter dates are written in chilly font.
  font OK?
  alt page needed?
  
  3. an artistic page, with poems about winter, incorporating chilly font.
  font OK?
  alt page needed?
  
  4. A hypothetical web site for a company "frosty cola".
  - a splash screen with chilly font
  font OK?
  alt page needed?
  
  - an employment listing with job listings in chilly font.
  font ok?
  alt page needed?
  
  Should WCAG 1.0 say any to distinguish these cases?
  Should WCAG 2.0 say any to distinguish these cases?
  
  If so, what?
  
  Len
  
  
  At 01:51 PM 10/27/00 -0400, Ian Jacobs wrote:
  >"Leonard R. Kasday" wrote:
  > >
  > > This is a proposal for a general guideline which will I think, help resolve
  > > the image text issue, and other issues as well. Its a modification of WCAG
  > > 1.0 checkpoint 11.4 on alternative pages.    It also needs to be added to
  > > WCAG 2.0--I don't see an equivalent to 11.4 in 2.0.
  > >
  > > Here's straw wording of what I'll call the "essential purpose" guideline.
  > >
  > > <guideline>
  > > If a web page's essential purpose prevents you from satisfying a
  > > checkpoint, you can consider that checkpoint passed if the user can
  > > conveniently access an alternative page on which the checkpoint is 
  > satisfied.
  > > </guideline>
  >
  >"Essential purpose" refer to author's intent. The Guidelines were
  >designed based on user needs. The tension between the two is
  >the source of many issues.
  >
  >In order for the author's intent to translate into content that
  >is accessible to users with disabilities, you must have
  >markup languages that allow authors to express their intent with
  >content that can still be manipulated to meet user needs. You
  >must also have user agent support for those markup languages.
  >
  >WCAG 1.0 was clearly designed to address user needs first
  >and author intention second. I think that it may be best to
  >leave it that way (even in clarifications), and that
  >WCAG 2.0 focus more on the author.
  >
  >Users have requirements. Responsibilities to meet those requirements
  >lie with specification writers, authors, and software developers.
  >As Charles has pointed out, in an ideal world, it may be easy
  >to divvy up responsibilities among those three camps. But in the
  >real world, the challenge is to identify who must do what, who
  >cannot do what, and what requirements may not be met by a given
  >set of guidelines. I don't think WCAG 1.0 was designed to, or
  >is flexible enough to, meet the needs of all users with disabilities.
  >
  >  - Ian
  >
  >--
  >Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
  >Tel:                         +1 831 457-2842
  >Cell:                        +1 917 450-8783
  
  --
  Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
  Institute on Disabilities/UAP and Dept. of Electrical Engineering at Temple 
  University
  (215) 204-2247 (voice)                 (800) 750-7428 (TTY)
  http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday         mailto:kasday@acm.org
  
  Chair, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Evaluation and Repair Tools Group
  http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/
  
  The WAVE web page accessibility evaluation assistant: 
  http://www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/piat/wave/
  

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia
September - November 2000: 
W3C INRIA, 2004 Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Monday, 30 October 2000 10:29:06 UTC