RE: RE Checkpoint 3.4 again

Charles;

I agree there is no element of enforcement in the guidelines, though I am
focused/stuck/hung up on the point 5 of the charter:

To be considered successful, this Working Group must ... test every proposed
technique for the Techniques document for efficacy and technical feasibility
(http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/new-charter-2000.html#success).

I don't think 3.4, as it stands now, is feasible. Perhaps it is feasible
technically, but not practically. It's impractical for this group to apply
3.4 to the WCAG 2.0 working document. 

Though, remembering your comments to Matt May:

<snippet>
It isn't our role to produce stuff group by group, it is our role to
describe
how to remove barriers for all people with disabilities, as far as that is
possible. One approach is that outlined by Kynn, of going back to looser
structures for conformance. There are others..
</snippet>

I suppose 3.4 makes perfect sense. But I would really hate to be on the
group that wrote a techniques document for that ;-) I question, though, how
feasible it is to implement this.

Finally, I'm assuming there will be WAI/WCAG icons available to indicate
compliance with the WCAG 2.0. Those are nice and a good evangelizing tool.
But to require - and this is how I'm using the term "enforce" - 3.4
compliance for use of the icons will mean hardly any use of the icons. 

In other words - there is an evangelization of these guidelines to a certain
degree - I'm assuming that's what the Charter means when it refers to the
"efficacy" of the recommendations. The inclusion of 3.4, as it now stands,
jeopardizes that goal, in my opinion.

Joel Sanda 
Product Manager
-------------------------------------------------------www.eCollege.com
eCollege
joels@ecollege.com
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-----Original Message-----
From: Charles McCathieNevile [mailto:charles@w3.org]
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2001 3:56 PM
To: Joel Sanda
Cc: 'Anne Pemberton'; 'Jo Miller'; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: RE: RE Checkpoint 3.4 again


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 18:23:46 UTC