- From: Joel Sanda <joels@ecollege.com>
- Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 15:16:48 -0600
- To: "'Anne Pemberton'" <apembert@erols.com>, "'Jo Miller'" <jo@bendingline.com>, w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Anne - You are absolutely right about kids. My son is three. None of the parenting books I dutifully read prior to his arrival into my life led me to believe words would be an obstacle. Of course, he's the smartest kid in the world <gin /> but doesn't care on bit about the words I read to him in the book. He's into sounds, images, and texture. He loves words like all kids, but a picture of a fire truck or the sound of a siren is all that is meaningful to him right now. So: point taken well, and your logic is what led me to try and illustrate 3.4 the past two evenings and refer to your Holiday's page for guidance. The logic of 3.4 is 100% right on. I'm excited about the prospect of how we can use XML and XSLT to render content in ways that are meaningful to all kinds of people. But I have tried bouncing this off several people: graphic designers, web developers, and content authors. Some at my work place, most friends at other companies or folks I've done work with the in the past. All had the same reaction: "yeah, that's cool, but I'm not gonna do it". Most seemed intimated by the requirement or felt it was overkill and would consume too many resources (time and money and bandwidth for the I.T. folks). I'm not sure 3.4 is appropriate for all web sites, or all content. We can't swing it with the WCAG 2.0, so I am *very* uncomfortable including it. If this group can't make it work with the requirement specifying it, I cannot put my vote behind its inclusion. And if we continue the logic of the WCAG 2.0, and point 3.4, we could also argue - with a greater sense of urgency behind it - that to be truly accessible the site would be in English and Chinese, since there are more people who can read English and Chinese than can't read text and leave with an understanding. This leads me to believe we may find more common ground and a solution we're happier about if we opt for a list of reasons to implement this technique, as well as how to implement the technqiues. Is it appropriate to implement this on the WCAG 2.0? Maybe not - since all the supporting material and the WCAG 2.0 are all in text and no one has the time to implement 3.4 on the content. Is it appropriate for an Internet Privacy Policy to implement this? You bet - only attorney's enjoy reading those <grin />. Is it appropriate for content geared to younger audiences or audiences that can't read? 100%. Joel Sanda Product Manager -------------------------------------------------------www.eCollege.com eCollege joels@ecollege.com > p. 303.873.7400 x3021 > f. 303.632.1721 -----Original Message----- From: Anne Pemberton [mailto:apembert@erols.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2001 2:56 PM To: Joel Sanda; 'Jo Miller'; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org Subject: RE: RE Checkpoint 3.4 again Joel, Kynn, and others .... Thanks very much for the comments on the holiday page. Yes, it is quite symbolic, but then it is created to be used mostly by non-readers ... I still have some illustrations (or symbols) to round up for some of the links before school starts ... The holidays pages is one of the pages that I use a lot of clip art to illustrate the links. I have learned that if I leave the links without illustration, the kids are less likely to use the link independently, tho they will use it when told to. Joel, in primary school, illustrating is an skill kids are expected to come to school with. In Kindergarten it is a favorite way of asking a child to show s/he understood a story. Throughout education, students are expected to illustrate their written and oral work. They may do pictures instead of a written book report, or as a part of one. They create covers for reports that illustrate their topic. They include illustrations in their reports -- in the lowest grades they are drawing, perhaps pasted pictures, and by grad school they are all charts of data .... but illustrating one's work continues. After schooling, as one settles down in a career, the need to illustrate doesn't go away. A co-worker needs to understand the work flow --- you draw a flow chart or something less ..... the head honchos want a demonstration of your idea or concept .... better have illustrations for them to look at while you're talking .... the need to illustrate is never far away. Perhaps my optimism that web designers will jump at the opportunity to consider illustrations for their sites is due to my place in education. It behooves me to stay as optimistic as possible ... You guys who expect a backlash from designers may indeed be right, since you have the closest contact with them. But I wonder if some of you who teach designers would give it a try sometime and let me know how bad it crashes .... Anne Anne Pemberton apembert@erols.com http://www.erols.com/stevepem http://www.geocities.com/apembert45
Received on Wednesday, 1 August 2001 17:16:48 UTC