Re: Call for review of WCAG 2.0 draft

William,

	Is your point is that we first have to devise the guidelines so "we" can
understand them, then we set about the task of making them understood by
the web-making public? 

	No, I think we should plan on making them understandable from the git-go
... Just like we want authors to plan web pages ... to make them
understandable and usable from the git-go ... I have a sister and a sister
in law who have taken classes on web pages, one with a associate degree in
computers, the other in an art program that included web page design ...
neither heard a word about accessibility in their classes and are probably
wondering if it's another "Anne going off on a tangent" situation ... 508
probably puts some starch in my words ... 

	Perhaps a recipe is a good metaphor ... you can generally change a recipe
as to quantities and size and still usually come out with a reasonable
product ... (but it helps to have a good understanding of chemistry to do
but so much doodling with bakery goodies) ... it you're a novice cook,
follow the recipe scrupulously ... For the novice cook, the recipe needs to
be precise ... not metaphorical ... for an experienced web author who is
addressing an imprecise audience, the guidelines need to be interpretable ...

					Anne

	
					



	 

At 08:31 AM 2/15/01 -0800, William Loughborough wrote:
>At 11:00 AM 2/15/01 -0500, Steven McCaffrey wrote:
>>In other words, are you trying to get the reader to create the tree or to 
>>traverse an existing one?
>
>Yes! It's not an "or" thing.
>
>Steven's comments about generalization are well-taken and in our 
>discussions have become tacit. They are of course written for "people like 
>us" to some extent because if someone happens to arrive via surf-board with 
>no previous knowledge of any of this stuff it's just "too bad". By which I 
>mean that these are *guidelines/checkpoints* and hopefully later 
>techniques/examples for people concerned with this rather specialized 
>field. A few people can "fill in the blanks" in an "of course" fashion just 
>from reading the guidelines while others can "get it" at the checkpoint 
>level, but on the whole the practical consequences will ensue from being 
>able to use the techniques as a sort of recipe set.
>
>--
>Love.
>                 ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE
>
>
Anne Pemberton
apembert@erols.com

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

Received on Thursday, 15 February 2001 19:26:02 UTC