RE: Illustrating Guidelines

At 10:03 PM 5/10/01 +0200, Emmanuelle Gutiérrez y Restrepo wrote:
Emmanuelle,

	Any attempt we make to set a mental age limit for the web will be highly
discriminatory. Alan Flavell last week asked that all web pages be designed
so that they will appear to a speech user as if they were created for "all
text" from the beginning. Is it any more unreasonable for those with
impaired cognition to ask that all web pages be designed as if they
contained "no text"? 

	In my humble opinion "all" is too much to ask ... but who will end up on
the other side of the dividing line?

				Anne

>And I believe that it is important to insist in the question of the
>cognitive level exigible. The American commercial movies are made for a 13
>year-old mental age, for that reason, many people prefer the European
>cinema. Will we demand that the Web is, also, comprehensible for a 13
>year-old mental age?
>
>Kindest regards,
>
>Emmanuelle
>
>And Sean Response:
>
>[BTW, you sent your reply directly to me, whereas the "et al" infers
>that you may have intended to send to the list... you can forward my
>reply on if you want to.]
>
>> [...] I believe that the question here is that we cannot demand
>> that all that is transmitted with text is also transmitted with
>> images by no means that everything is made in such a way that
>> all the people with cognitive deficiencies of any degree can
>> understand it.
>
>Well put. This is pretty much what I meant by the "scoping" of this
>guideline - it is rare to require a piece of work to be comprehensible
>to literally *anyone*, even if that were possible. The thing that
>interests me with this though is the entire notion of adding the
>images to the text rather than adding the text to the images - it's an
>intersting way of going about it, and it points out some deficiencies
>in our current UI markup structures (i.e. HTML).
>
>> Also, there are concepts that can only be communicated
>> graphically and in an appropriate way through the
>> animation or the videotape. Will we demand that all the
>> pages Web contains animations or videotapes?.
>
>Not all, of course, but we should be careful to ensure that such a
>thing is possible naturally. I guess that's more of a PF thing once
>again, but as far as the guidelines go, we should be careful to
>include the "demand when applicable".
>
>--
>Kindest Regards,
>Sean B. Palmer
>
>-----Mensaje original-----
>De: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org]En
>nombre de Sean B. Palmer
>Enviado el: jueves, 10 de mayo de 2001 19:07
>Para: Emmanuelle Gutiérrez y Restrepo
>CC: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
>Asunto: Re: Illustrating Guidelines
>
>
>Hi Emmanuelle,
>
>> The reading of an image is as complex as the reading
>> of a text.
>
>Not always - I'd contend that on occasion they are one step ahead. For
>example:-
>
>   Chair (a word to someone who understands English)
>
>   [Picture of a chair] (to someone who has seen a chair before)
>
>Both require the notion of a chair to be understood by the "reader",
>but I suggest that anyone who has seen a chair automatically
>understands the concept, whereas someone who comes across the word
>without having the notion has to be taught it, possibly from context,
>first. That's a extra step that is present in langauge, but isn't in
>illustrations. But this is just an example - not a rule.
>
>> the reading of the image is not a habitual subject in the
>> schools, it is only given in specialized university courses.
>
>Are you saying that someone needs a degree in order to recognize the
>concept behind the picture of a simple object such as a banana? There
>is a variance in the level of complexity in both lanaguage and
>ilustrations, and I think it is unfair to catagorize either one too
>strictly.
>
>> the "esvástica" (the cross gamada) has a very different meaning in
>> the India and in occident.
>
>That is true, but citing one example doesn't make it a rule. Citing a
>million examples doesn't make it a rule. A rule is defined by proving
>that there are no exceptions.
>
>> it is necessary that somebody explains to us what means in
>> each context, for example, the symbol of a person in wheelschair.
>
>I agree. This is why text and images are often complements of one
>another. But it must be accepted that sometimes they are not. Anne's
>picture of Geroge Washington and the associated text is a good
>example - if you don't know who Gerorge Washington is, then you don't
>know who George Washington is. If you only know his face and not his
>name, then the picture helps. If you only know his name and not his
>face, then the text helps.
>
>--
>Kindest Regards,
>Sean B. Palmer
>@prefix : <http://webns.net/roughterms/> .
>:Sean :hasHomepage <http://purl.org/net/sbp/> .
>
>
Anne Pemberton
apembert@erols.com

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

Received on Thursday, 10 May 2001 21:02:27 UTC