- From: Katie Haritos-Shea <ryladog@earthlink.net>
- Date: Wed, 9 May 2001 22:59:46 -0400
- To: "3WC WCAG" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Sean said..... Yes! This reminds me very much of the sign-object-concept relationship of John Sowa that Seth keeps going on about. Words are a representation of concepts... but so are pictures. Why should we limit ourselves to one form of expression when another can serve just as well (and indeed better) in certain contexts? The problem is as WL pointed out - text is repurposable. *********Provided you happen to understand the particular language that the text is written in. Aren't pictures and symbols more universal, understood by more people around the world, than a single language? Is it not a "language" on it's own? I would say the similarities (of images), are by far the more universally understandable medium. More powerful than the cultural differences of, "what constitutes a chair?". People all around the world will understand the one image of a chair, whereas that same idea in text must be expressed in 250+ different languages to convey the same information.******************** Any generic symbols can most likely also be made to be repurposable, and then you get into that awful murky area about what constitutes a good "sign"... does a lightbulb in a sign mean a lightbuld or an idea? With words it's usually clearer because of the context, but pictures are more difficult (although not impossible) to assign contexts to. SVG is a bright light on the horizon, because it allows certain parts of images to be repurposed... but it lacks implementation. *********Perhaps our guidelines can help speed the movement of this implementation, if we make images, icons, a priority. Or , at the very least stress the importance**************** As William says, this might well change the way we think, but it is unlikely to change what we do. ************Why? Again, we can nudge along these ideas. They are already there in universal symbols on signs all around the world. These same ideas and icons can be an integral part of expanding the understandability, usability, and traffic of many sites.****************** That's a shame, but at least it is an almost understandable shame. Still, I like the notion of reversing "provide text for multimedia" to "provide multimedia for text". One interesting point to raise is that by adding text to images you aren't really doing much except enabling repurposing... whereas by adding multimedia to text, often you can add something that simply cannot be expressed in text. Which is more moving - an article about war in black and white, or an article about war with pictures of the tragides that are occuring? William is always asking us (with good reason!) to think of the starving babies, but maybe he would have more impact if he attached a picture of a starving baby to every email that he sent? I suppose illustrations could make a good Barnraising. ********Very true************ *******My late night rant************ -- Kindest Regards, Sean B. Palmer @prefix : <http://webns.net/roughterms/> . :Sean :hasHomepage <http://purl.org/net/sbp/> . Katie Haritos-Shea 11809 Waples Mill Road Oakton, Virginia 22124-2113 USA 703-620-3551 Mobile: 571-220-7777 mailto:ryladog@earthlink.net mailto:kshea@fedworld.gov mailto:kshea@ntis.gov WAI Glossary http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/Glossary/printable.html
Received on Wednesday, 9 May 2001 23:02:00 UTC