Re: Illustrating Guidelines

Thanks, William,

	I guess this means I met your and Bruce's challenge to prove that even the
guidelines can be illustrated! <grin> Next step is to make this important
enough so that, as a start, government sites can be made usable to a
greater portion of the tax-paying public. 

By the way, does this bring us any closer to being able to state in one of
the guidelines that, just as all componants need a text equivalent, all
text must be illustrated ???  

Earcons are an interesting concept, but a more compact file than *.wav
needs to become available to create them... I'm not sure if MP3 would be
more usable. *.Mid files are more compact than *.wav files, but you can't
put voice on midi. Rose, my librarian colleague, is always on the look out
for web sites where the story is 1) presented in text, 2) illustrated AND
3) read aloud to the user .... they are still few and far between ... Until
IE and NN include speech readers, there will be a need for development of
human voice reading of text. Perhaps that need could be woven into the
guideline for "simple and clear language" ... for those who simply cannot
write their essays any lower on a numeric reading scale, suggest they
include a sound file of the author reading the text on the page.... 

				Anne

PS: William, had a sound issue with one of my special children. A severely
cognitively disabled child from a syndrom that make her brittle about any
changes, had to move to a new computer (her usual one was retired), and the
first problem was sound - she pulled the large earphones off in less than a
minutes, lasted 3 minutes with the small ones, but relaxed and tried the
new game when I hooked up a set of speakers ... she surprised us all by
handling 1) the sound experiments, 2) change in game, and 3) change from
one to two-button mouse, all in one session! Changes that in "real life"
are catastrophic to such children, can be taken in stride when they are
"technology", once the child is thoroughly comfortable with "technology"
... there is no telling what changes will be wrought in the future!



	

	


At 06:47 AM 5/9/01 -0700, William Loughborough wrote:
>At 06:26 AM 5/9/01 -0400, Anne Pemberton wrote:
>>Oops, sorry
>
>Speaking only for myself I would apologize for taking so long to 
>acknowledge the "Pemberton Principle" - which you already knew: 
>Illustrations are acceptable for all, useful for many, mandatory for some.
>
>They are "refusable" for those who don't like/want/need them and this is 
>nice from a privacy/privelege/priority view.
>
>The details don't really matter. Once the very first example (checkpoint 
>3.1) is seen it is clear that the skills of a specialist can make this 
>"principle" an integral part of WCAG 2. I hold little hope that much of the 
>kind can be done with earcons/sounds because the implementations of those 
>possibilities is still so primitive.
>
>I fervently hope that this sort of thing will pervade W3C space soon.
>
>--
>Love.
>                 ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE
>
>
Anne Pemberton
apembert@erols.com

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

Received on Wednesday, 9 May 2001 17:39:34 UTC