- From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>
- Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:19:25 -0700
- To: Anne Pemberton <apembert@erols.com>
- Cc: Al Gilman <asgilman@iamdigex.net>, <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
At 01:27 PM 7/30/2001 , Anne Pemberton wrote: >Kynn, > It's tough to put a reading level on single words or phrases that are not part of a large body of sentences and paragraphs, because much of the complexity of reading is in the whole, rather than the parts, of the passage. That's what I thought. I'm not sure that the solution outlined before -- using a Reef-style transformation to add UI components for definitions of "hard" words -- will actually work, at least not in the near future. (It may be possible to do something which sorta works and provides benefit, though.) Looking at this in terms of Reef EveryWare's capabilities, I think the approach I would choose would be to require the author (or "an author") to supply alternative text content if they wish to deliver a "reading level"-based transformation. It's hard to conceive of a way to automatically generate a "lower grade version" of textual content. I would suggest that a better solution is simply to forgo the idea of making "transformable interfaces" and instead just write to a simpler "grade level". This can be accomplished through simply writing -well-, as well as linking in appropriate explanatory text and sidebars as needed. Thus you won't need to do any textual content transformation, since it -all- should be "as accessible as we can make it." --Kynn PS: I think "grade level" as a measure of writing and reading skills is a bad idea. Linkage to specific "grades" in elementary school can easily turn off an educated web developer; the danger is in seeming like we are asking them to "dumb down" their words "for stupid people". In truth, it takes more "smarts" to write something so that EVERYONE can understand it, and clearer, lower-level writing is a benefit to all, not just specific audiences. -- Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com> Technical Developer Liaison Reef North America Accessibility - W3C - Integrator Network Tel +1 949-567-7006 ________________________________________ BUSINESS IS DYNAMIC. TAKE CONTROL. ________________________________________ http://www.reef.com
Received on Monday, 30 July 2001 18:20:34 UTC