Re: Graphic Designers work - potential for WCAG?

At 09:02 PM 5/22/01 -0700, Matt May wrote:
>If there's going to be a multimedia explanation of the guidelines, hanging 
>it off of a structure built around HTML is not the way to do it.

Perhaps not *the* way, but *a* way?

The guidelines will either be "explained" using multimedia or we will 
continue fielding justifiable complaints about mis-/under use of the Web's 
promise.

Any concrete proposals about ways to do it that aren't "hung off a 
structure built around markup language" would be gratefully accepted.

MM:: "The language, even today, lends itself most significantly to text, 
and to other media only as an afterthought"

WL: The "language", at least in part, is what we are working on modifying 
so that this "afterthought" problem can be solved. That's why we seek to 
generalize/abstract and also why we are working on XMLGL which, of course, 
will "govern" XHTML.

MM:: "...we're dealing with a usability problem ..."

WL: Let's deal with it then. If you're saying that making illustrations, 
etc. part of WCAG 2 makes it less usable, I find it hard to credit that. 
Implicit in every aspect of this activity is the notion of "user control" 
and for those (like me!) who find illustrations distracting (in the sense 
that I have to scroll more?), there will be as simple a mechanism for 
correcting that inconvenience as now exists in my email reader to skip 
Spam. Hey, I like keyboards better than mice and command line interfaces 
better than GUIs but unless the sand in my eyes from having my head buried 
in it clouds what's out there, the overwhelming bulk of our intended 
"beneficiaries" want/need/deserve and will get multimedia inclusions in 
just about everything.

Even dictionaries are illustrated, whether I think that's an absurd waste 
of space or not.

--
Love.
                 ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE

Received on Wednesday, 23 May 2001 09:28:24 UTC