RE: [CSS-TECHS] goals and audience of this document

I can certainly provide assistance with popular cross-browser support of
CSS-1. I'd hate to tackle CSS-P in Level 2 due to its spotty support. Though
I coded a site that used that, we spent many hours tackling Netscape 4.x
browser with some custom JavaScript for that to happen.

As far as CSS-1 browser support, Wendy, will this ideally be a table with
columns for all CSS-1 elements and attributes, a note on it's applicability
to accessibility, then an indication of the support it has in different
browser and OS combinations? 

My personal feeling is to limit the table to techniques described in the
document and stay away from describing support for things that just don't
work that well in most browsers on most platforms. Perhaps a small
discussion after each technique identified that identifies the technique's
support, or ways to implement the techqnique with tested CSS examples?

Joel Sanda 
Product Manager
-------------------------------------------------------www.eCollege.com
eCollege
joels@ecollege.com
> p. 303.873.7400 x3021
> f.  303.632.1721 


-----Original Message-----
From: Wendy A Chisholm [mailto:wendy@w3.org]
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 11:38 AM
To: Jo Miller; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: [CSS-TECHS] goals and audience of this document


Jo,

>Before I suggest any wording, though, I should make sure I'm on the same 
>page as the rest of the group. I'm interested in knowing the set of 
>specific needs that the CSS Techniques document aims to address (and also 
>what it does not aim to address, i.e., things that are more appropriately 
>covered elsewhere).

Good question.
We haven't discussed this for the technology-specific stuff, but for the 
higher level guidelines/checkpoints.  Therefore, my initial thoughts, and I 
think we can apply these thoughts to all of the technology-specific
documents:

We have several audiences:
content developers,
policy makers, managers, and disability community advocates,
authoring tool developers,
users,
Testers and evaluators,
developers of evaluation tools


The goals of the CSS-TECHS for content developers (I'd say this is our 
primary audience):
1. To give developers a good idea of what accessible CSS looks like.  We 
will do this through prose, examples, screen shots, and links to live 
sites/pages.
2. To help developers evaluate if their use of CSS is accessible.  They can 
do this by comparing their results with the examples, screen shots, etc. 
but also through the assessment sections (which are still need a lot of
work).

Overall, developers need to understand what makes a site accessible.  We 
hope they do this by reading the Guidelines and Checkpoints in the top 
layer.  Then, when they begin looking at using CSS and how to do it such 
that it satisfies the Guidelines and Checkpoints, it will be clear from the 
CSS Techniques doc.

The goal of the CSS-techs (for policy makers, managers, and disability 
community advocates):
Is to help them understand the high-level issues with CSS:  the possible 
accessibility issues, but also the benefits.

The goal of the CSS-techs (for authoring tool developers) is similar to 
content developers: understand what makes accessible CSS so that their 
tools will generate accessible code.

The goal for users is to be able to create their own style sheets if they 
want to (the last appendix) and understand the issues so that they can make 
suggestions to developers (advocate for accessibility).

Testers and evaluators of content have similar needs to the content 
developers, just as developers of evaluation tools have similar needs to 
authoring tool developers.

Have I missed any body?  Is this trying to tackle too much? Does this 
answer your question?

>>Would you like to begin working on the reasoning for each item?
>
>Sure, at least for items for which I know the reasoning. In some cases I 
>don't. (I'm definitely not the world's greatest CSS expert.)

any bit helps.  I and others can help fill in the gaps.

--w
--
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
seattle, wa usa
tel: +1 206.706.5263
/--

Received on Thursday, 19 July 2001 13:40:13 UTC