Re: Subsumation

William,
	Whenever I visit your xguide.htm, I again appreciate your skills in making
the incomprehensible comprehensible. The organization on the page makes it
easy to compare Guidelines 1 and 3 at the same time, to consider where it
best belongs. 

	Under "Illustrate Appropriately", we can include the checkpoints you
mentioned, to add alt text, descriptions, text scripts, etc., but it should
also include making choices of "illustrations", use simplist illustrations
when possible (transparent backgrounds, simple drawings, clear photos in 2
sizes, complex drawings in 2 sizes, etc.) 

	My homeschooled nephew (yrs old) is visiting this weekend, equipped with
Game Boy. He has a few Pokemon games (of course!), and a camera attachment
for the devise. The little goosenecked lamp he plugs into it is very
effective, tho it could scatter light a bit more than it does. 

	But, what fascinated me was the screen. It can handle detailed drawings
with basic color, and a good bit of tightly-organized text and options. The
screen used with the camera is nice, but only b/w images. Color and details
can be added, and my nephew uses his keypad as swiftly and surely as I type
text and more efficiently than I use a pointing device. (Youngsters who are
learning these skills with tiny hands fascinate me, as much as seeing good
penmanship with tiny hands fascinated generations of teachers before me.)

	This all said, I can see the difficulties with web sites being useful on
small screens. There has to be a different presentation scheme for use on
small screens ... If a graphic can be associated with a page, chapter or
paragraph on a full-sized screen, it will need to be associated with a
specific sentence to function properly on a small screen. I have no idea
how this could be done. 

					Anne  


At 06:32 AM 1/13/01 -0800, William Loughborough wrote:
>When Anne and Jonathan first raised the notion of "alt images for text" I 
>had, shall we say, strong reservations. Now as I look rather 
>dispassionately at the items in the "Device Independent" box of 
>http://rdf.pair.com/xguide.htm and attend to the third: "Illustrate 
>appropriately" I am persuaded that although what this conjures up is a 
>graphic associated with a blob of text, which isn't currently contained in 
>GL 1, it is an even more general statement of the first bullet: "Provide 
>content equivalents" (which covers the first three GL 1 checkpoints).
>
>Illustrating appropriately is easily thought of as including alt text for 
>images and all the caption/summary/description/+ activities that are so 
>laboriously delineated in connection with multimedia via SMIL, etc. It also 
>includes what is now the second bullet "Emphasize
>content/structure with presentation" since such action is importantly 
>illustrative.
>
>And of course the roots of "depiction" infer evoking a "mental image" of 
>something. That mental image is actually a lower level of abstraction from 
>the sub-verbal level of semantics and is what communicating is about. The 
>details of its evocation are enumerated at differing levels by the 
>checkpoints/techniques/examples.
>
>Basically I'm arguing to include what is now (obliquely?) called for in 3.4 
>"Use multimedia to illustrate concepts" - although that doesn't specify 
>illustrating text - under GL 1.
>
>Any takers?
>
>--
>Love.
>                 ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE
>
>
Anne L. Pemberton
http://www.pen.k12.va.us/Pav/Academy1
http://www.erols.com/stevepem/Homeschooling
apembert@crosslink.net
Enabling Support Foundation
http://www.enabling.org

Received on Sunday, 14 January 2001 09:24:22 UTC