Re: Illustrating Guidelines

At 01:18 PM 5/12/01 +1000, Jason White wrote:
>In particular, there is disagreement over the efficacy of multimedia and 
>illustrations in this context.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "efficacy of multimedia". It's hard 
to imagine that anyone in the discussion thinks that multimedia 
presentations aren't effective.

Much of our document is intended to assure that the extensive communication 
afforded those who have, e.g. sensory access to all aspects of these media 
is also afforded those who do not. Just that attention proves we take the 
efficacy of multimedia as fact. If it weren't efficacious we wouldn't have 
to deal with it.

There was an argument as to whether text *by itself* was adequate to 
communicate content - for everyone (except people who could not read it). I 
thought it had become quite clear that "literacy" is more complex than it's 
been given credit for and that some literate people (including some who 
have spoken up in this regard) are excluded from accessing content that is 
*all/only* text.

For those people (and, in fact for a great many others who are merely "put 
off" by unillustrated text), we need to make it clear that there is a 
problem with sites that are unadorned by multimedia presentation elements. 
For people who essentially make their living by writing it, text is 
marvelous, and in fact *seems* adequate by itself - as the entirety of the 
communication process.

It is not.

The very widespread complaints about our documents and in fact our entire 
oeuvre indicate that the guidelines themselves need to consider the 
inclusion of multimedia components as a self-imposed requirement - for the 
documents themselves and as guideline recommendations.
--

Love.
                 ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE

Received on Saturday, 12 May 2001 01:24:26 UTC