Re: The fourth element?

This is an interesting suggestion. Are there aspects of it which haven't
been adequately addressed in the guidelines, for example in guideline 4
(browsing and navigation), and guideline 5 (input device independence of
user interfaces)? One could argue that if the web content provides its own
user interface, the access requirements would be met, on the output side,
by text equivalents (guideline 1), separation of content/structure from
style/presentation (guideline 2), facilitating comprehension (guideline
3), and facilitating browsing and navigation (guideline 4); and on the
input side there is the requirement for device independence (guideline 5).
These requirements are, naturally, qualified by the over-arching need for
compatibility with user agents and adaptive technologies. Furthermore, is
there any need to distinguish, in terms of basic requirements, from
documents and user interfaces? Is not a hypertext document a relatively
simple user interface, with structure, navigational elements and input in
the form of link activations? Moving beyond this basic scenario to
consider forms and other user interface components included as part of the
web content, it would seem that the access requirements remain
fundamentally the same, irrespective of how the interface is implemented
(as a form, as a client-side script, as a downloaded executable), and so
forth.

If we concentrate on the requirements, as William suggested, rather than
on the technologies used to implement them, in formulating the basic
access requirements, then is there any aspect which is not adequately
covered by the existing scheme as outlined above (this being a summary of
the 2.0 draft as it presently stands)?

If a user interface is supplied by a user agent then it becomes the
province of the user agent guidelines.

Received on Tuesday, 28 November 2000 18:12:21 UTC