- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 17:56:28 -0400 (EDT)
- To: Joel Sanda <joels@ecollege.com>
- cc: "'Anne Pemberton'" <apembert@erols.com>, "'Jo Miller'" <jo@bendingline.com>, <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Yes. Well, sort of. We are not enforcing it, we are pointing out that it needs to be done to make content accessible to people with disabilities. If your society (nation, state, local club, household) requires you to make things accessible to people with disabilities we are creating the technical resource that explains what you need to do. You maythen choose how to use that resource in relation to the customs, rules and taboos of that society. One of those symbolic systems we require is text. 3.4 is an attempt (and I agree, at this stage it is far from complete or effective) to provide guidance for another symbolic system. The Deaf community where I live aren't very interested in text, becuase it is not very comprehensible. They have a symbolic system of language (Auslan, a sign language), they are mostly fond of graphic comunication in general which they find comprehensible (gross generalisation warning). If you want an effective way to make content accessible to this group, provide it in signed form. Or at least in graphic-rich form. I can't force people to make stuff accessible. I can tell them how (to the best of my knowledge, which is mostly borrowed from the whole of this group, and then summarised by me). WCAG is in the same situation. cheers Charles On Wed, 1 Aug 2001, Joel Sanda wrote: Anne - Any method of representing one thing with another is a symbolic system of expression. But that means pure text is symbolic, as well - as is all language. The fear many of have, though, is that we're enforcing methods of expression onto developers and content authors.
Received on Wednesday, 1 August 2001 17:56:32 UTC