RE: RE Checkpoint 3.4 again

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