Re: Minutes from 16 November 2000 WCAG WG telecon

At 05:26 AM 11/17/00 -0800, William Loughborough wrote:
>The intention is not to avoid its use but to elucidate its implications. It 
>is not *just a line* because it is a skimming target for sighted users and 
>its function as a place-marker/divider is what's being covered. 

So, what would signal the location of such markers to a skimming sightless
person? 

The notion 
>of revealing structural elements is counter-intuitive for blindless people 
>because it's so "obvious" why there's a bit of red that shows something is 
>a new item, or whatever. 

William, nothing is ever "obvious" to the variety of perceptions people
bring to the web. That's why I keep saying that adding text to navigational
graphics are essential. The graphic is needed and the text is needed ... by
"blindless" people. In addition, what is needed by the "sightless" people? 

Structure, like grammar, is almost hard-wired in 
>the brain so making it clear *to* the author and *for* the reader is what 
>the aim is. It's a fairly monumental task and is at the root of the 
>separation of content/structure/presentation dicta.

To separate them, you need to classify them, and I'm not sure that all
that's being classified as presentation isn't structure. And I think it's
probably very difficult to separate content from structure and still convey
the author's message. 

This week I have had 7 year olds writing introductory e-mail to young
people learning English as a second language, and worked with children
whose skills ranged from "has written e-mail before" to "doesn't know how
to separate words or space down on a keyboard"... the most effective prompt
was a two-color outline of what to write ... I could tell the kids "Type
what's in black, but not what's in blue" and prevent corrections. In blue
was a broader description of what they child was to accomplish with that
sentence starter ... the all black sheets used later in the week when the
colored ones bit the dust, didn't allow as many kids to complete the
activity in the time slot. Obvious, the value of color as an aide to visual
reading ... coding it so it delivers information to a speech reader or
other output device ...

William, Guideline 2.0 needs your wonderful touch on visual organization
... I can't understand it well enough myself to suggest how to do it, but
always like what you come up with! Also need examples of what content,
structure, and presentation are in an example that displays in a browser,
and what information is available in a presentation that includes coding
for a broader range of output devices... 

				Anne 

	
Anne L. Pemberton
http://www.pen.k12.va.us/Pav/Academy1
http://www.erols.com/stevepem/Homeschooling
apembert@crosslink.net
Enabling Support Foundation
http://www.enabling.org

Received on Saturday, 18 November 2000 14:57:48 UTC