- From: Anne Pemberton <apembert@crosslink.net>
- Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 08:33:42 -0800
- To: "Matt May" <mcmay@bestkungfu.com>
- Cc: "WAI GL" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Matt, You say you could build a dictionary for Netscape in an afternoon. But none exists now. First question is why? Do you really think it's more efficient to have a dictionary on every machine intead of central dictionaries located on the web? I disagree, strongly. First of all people don't always use the same computer all the time, and secondly, there may be more than one user on any given machine. As one who has taught her share of high school English classes over the years, I truly shudder at the idea of all users creating their own dictionaries. If you think it's a lot of work for content providers with large caches of content to clean up their stuff, imagine the work load of all users building their own web dictionaries. >> It may be that news sources (AP style or cavalier!) will >> discover/invent a new "style" system to use on the web ... > >That's all well and good, but I don't think creating a style guide is within >our charter, nor should it be. Matt, I didn't say the WAI would invent a new "style" system, that isn't our job. We need only to set the basic rules that will be incorporated in whatever new style rules the industry comes up with. It should be pretty obvious to anyone who thinks about it that AP style, which expands a term the first time it is encountered, isn't going to work on the web since that "first time" slides out of view as you scroll down. Scrolling up and down a document while reading it should be minimized, so the terms have to be expanded wherever they occur. My thought is that the content providers should be responsible for content, whether it's linearizing tables, defining unique terms or illustrating their concepts and/or alt tagging the non-text portions of the content. It's all part of the package of what the content provider should be doing. 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 Friday, 29 December 2000 08:38:02 UTC