Re: Compliance ratings

Paul,

	Thank you very much! It's an excellent idea!

	It will render a more complex document, but a more useful one.

				Anne


At 05:16 PM 4/23/01 -0600, Paul Bohman wrote:
>This email is going to be a bit of a departure from recent threads in the
>discussion. In some ways I might be jumping the gun with the idea in this
>email, since we are not deciding priority levels at this point, but I would
>like to get the idea out in the open, even if we decide that it is a
>discussion item for the future.
>
>In recent discussions, the point has been brought up that certain guidelines
>will have little or no importance to some types of disabilities, while the
>same items may be of supreme importance to other types of disabilities. This
>dilemma is not easily solved, and I haven't come to any conclusions as to
>the best way to solve the problem, but I'd like to present an idea (which
>perhaps is not original) on how it might be solved.
>
>Maybe it would be best to rank the accessibility of a page or a site on four
>different criteria:
>1. accessibility to people with visual disabilities
>2. accessibility to people with hearing disabilities
>3. accessibility to people with motor disabilities
>4. accessibility to people with cognitive/neurological disabilities.
>
>I have drawn up a concept sketch of what the W3C approval icon might look
>like, and I am including it as an attachment in this email to help
>illustrate the concept.
>
>Here is the text description of the icon and its purpose:
>
>In the upper left corner is the W3C logo, with the word "Accessibility"
>below it. To the right of these words it says "WCAG 2.0". To the right of
>these elements are four icons: an eye, an ear, a hand, and a brain (at least
>it's supposed to look like a brain-all of these icons could use a little
>work). Each of the icons represents a category of disabilities (visual,
>hearing, motor, and cognitive/neurological). Below each of these icons is
>the rating for each of the disability types. In this case, the rating for
>visual disabilities is Triple-A. For hearing disabilities, it is Double-A.
>For Motor disabilities it is Single-A, and for Cognitive/Neurological
>disabilities, it is Double-A.
>
>The icon is for a hypothetical page or site, but I'm using it just as a
>prototype/concept.
>
>Possible benefits of this rating system:
>1. It would be easy to quickly tell whether or not a page has been optimized
>for a particular disability type (in the page author's estimation, at least)
>2. Meta tags, alt tags or other information could be associated with a page
>to make it easier for search engines to index pages that are optimized for
>certain disability types.
>3. Perhaps the _MOST IMPORTANT_ benefit, however, would be that the rating
>system actually means something for each disability type. Hypothetically
>speaking, we won't be forced to relegate some guidelines that are very
>important to people with cognitive disabilities into a lower priority level.
>4. The use of icons is a step in the right direction for those with
>cognitive disabilities.
>
>Possible drawbacks include:
>1. The rating system becomes more complex, in that there are four ratings
>per page or site, rather than one (although I would argue that such a rating
>system is more meaningful)
>2. The icon becomes bigger (with more graphical content), which may deter
>its use
>3. This system isn't 100% backward-compatible with the original version
>(1.0). (Still, there is an element of backward-compatibility, in that I
>haven't discarded the Single-A, Double-A, Triple-A system entirely).
>
>I'm sure there are other possible benefits and drawbacks as well. I'm not
>100% convinced that this is the best way to proceed, but I think the idea
>has potential, and it merits discussion.
>
>Paul Bohman
>Technology Coordinator
>WebAIM: Web Accessibility in Mind (www.webaim.org)
>Center for Persons with Disabilities (www.cpd.usu.edu)
>Utah State University (www.usu.edu)
>
>
>Attachment Converted: "c:\eud-anne\attach\wcaglogo.gif"
>
Anne Pemberton
apembert@erols.com

http://www.erols.com/stevepem
http://www.geocities.com/apembert45

Received on Monday, 23 April 2001 20:49:46 UTC