Re: NEW DRAFT NEW DRAFT NEW DRAFT

Wendy,

         What a  good job you did pulling these together. As always, I read 
thru the guidelines to find out where it says, firmly and unambiguously, 
that illustrations must be provided with text content. It isn't there yet.

After the opportunity to put this concept in Guideline 1 is missed, I 
looked at Guideline 3. Here is 3.4, which is as close as it gets to meeting 
the need. (continued below quote)

>3.4 Use multimedia to illustrate concepts.
>Benefits
>Sounds, graphics, videos and animations can help make concepts presented 
>in a Web site easier to understand, especially for people with cognitive 
>disabilities or those who are unfamiliar with the language of the text of 
>the site.
>Success criteria
>·       Illustrations must be designed to portray important concepts or 
>relationships employed in the content. [SOUNDS LIKE ADVICE OR RULE RATHER 
>THAN SUFFICIENCY.]
>·       2. Where appropriate, illustrations should be referred to in the 
>text (e.g., in a caption or as part of the textual exposition), to provide 
>the reader with an appropriate context in which to interpret the illustration.
>Non-normative examples
>For example, this image tries to represent the idea that a text equivalent 
>equals its non-text equivalent as described in Checkpoint 1.1.
>[D]

The benefits are nicely stated, but the success criteria have NOTHING to do 
with meeting the needs. They seem to go off on a tangent.

What is sufficient to indicate a site is illustrated? Why, the presence of 
the illustrations of course. Is one illustration per page sufficient to 
make a page usable by a person with limited reading skills?  Would it be 
better to say one illustration for every 100 words of text? 200 words? How 
large should the illustrations be? Has a site passed sufficiency with a 
single illustration that is too small to see well and cannot be enlarged? 
How can the sufficiency criteria address the problems FOR TEXT-IMPAIRED 
USERS? What does the second sufficiency provide for the poor reader? More 
words?

Let re-direct the sufficiency criteria to support the guideline and it's 
intent. Let it discuss how much illustration is necessary to make a site 
usable by text-disabled users. Let it discuss choosing appropriate 
illustrations. Let it discuss the sizing issues so the illustrations can be 
used by those with normal sight and those with something less.

One "technique" I use when illustrating pages, is to make two versions of 
the graphic, the full sized one, and a resample version that appears on the 
page. This lets the page load without the extra time of pulling in the full 
sized picture if the user doesn't want to view it anyway.

                                                 Anne