Re: New draft - 14 August 2001

Wendy (and Gregg and Jason),

It's a pleasure to read each new version of the draft and see it 
improving so substantially, thanks to your hard work. Well done! It's 
really coming together, and where open issues remain, you've handled 
them well in the notes to reviewers.

By the way, I'm really happy with the trimmed-down introduction. I 
think it hangs together better and serves its function more 
successfully at this length.

Below are some questions and suggested edits that you may find 
absurdly nitpicky. Feel free to dismiss. I just thought a last pass 
with a fine-toothed comb might be useful at this point. Whether to 
incorporate any of these minor edits before or after publication (or 
ever!) I'll leave up to you.

Introduction: Purpose
- "andaccessible" needs a space.
- Why "individuals" rather than "people"? (I always wanted to ask a 
cop this question--American police seem to love the word 
"individual"--but I refrained for obvious reasons.)
- The example about reading TV captions seems to be just hanging 
there. Readers might reasonably expect the next paragraph to comment 
on the significance of the example, but it does not, and the 
example's connection to the preceding paragraph is noticeable only 
upon re-reading. I fear the response of readers encountering this 
isolated example might be along the lines of "Yeah, so? Why do you 
ask?" Does anyone else feel this way, or is it just me? Note that I'm 
very much in favor of real-life examples and analogies (including 
this one), and I think we should choose them thoughfully and place 
them where they can support our message most powerfully, eliciting 
the "Ah-ha! I get it!" response. This one seems to function somewhat 
like a highlighted pullout in a magazine or newspaper article (which 
may indeed be an effective way to present examples and analogies, but 
which would require some additional formatting to the document).
- "In following the guidelines...": It's easy for the reader's brain 
to transpose this to "In the following guidelines." Possibly "When 
following the guidelines"?

How to Read This Document
- First paragraph: semicolon rather than comma before "therefore."
-"At the top layer is the most general of the concepts the bottom 
layer is the most specific of the concepts." Something is missing 
here. Suggest "The top layer contains the most general of the 
concepts and the bottom layer the most specific." Or "At the top 
layer are the most general concepts, and at the bottom layer are the 
most specific."
- I had the same reaction as Loretta about "4" and would prefer to 
see it spelled out as "four." "21" seems OK.
- Need to standardize punctuation in the Guideline bullet items: 
periods are used in 1 and 2, colons in 3 and 4.
- Explanations of top layer/bottom layer and normative/informative 
seem very clear to me.
- Hypnenate "technology-specific" in "technology-specific 
information" (as you have elsewhere).

Overview of Design Principles
- "The purpose and design of a site will vary as much as the people 
who create it." Makes sense until you stop and think about it. 
Suggest "The purpose and design of sites will vary as much as the 
people who create them"?
-"Content that is usable, attractive and meets the needs of its 
audience is _designed_ that way." I confess this one always bothered 
me. There's a parallelism problem, and "that way" sent me looking for 
an antecedent the first few times I read it. I would suggest an 
alternative wording, but I'm not sure I understand what we're trying 
to convey with this sentence.  I think maybe my difficulty is that I 
can't find the central idea or topic sentence of this paragraph.
- Next paragraph contains a typo: "usably" for "usable."
- We're using the word "variety" rather a lot, I notice. In some 
cases, "many," "multiple," "a range of," "several," or other 
alternatives might be substituted for the sake of .... 
well....variety.
- The sentence beginning "For example, people who are..." is a 
fragment and needs to be incorporated into the preceding sentence or 
given a main clause of its own.
- "a famous quote in a movie." Suggest "a famous line in a movie." 
(If it's in the movie, it's not a quotation.)

User Needs
- "Here are a few scenarios, by no means an exhaustive list of the 
variations and types of disabilities and needs:"  Suggest "Here are a 
few scenarios--by no means an exhaustive list--of the variations and 
types of disabilities and needs:"
- "A screen reader is an example of an assistive technology that 
reads the page aloud." Do we also want to include a brief example of 
an adaptive strategy here, since we've mentioned it?

A process for building content
- "The first place to start" is redundant; "The place to start" or 
"The place to begin" would do. Perhaps the redundancy has been added 
for emphasis.
- Recommend we stick with the pronoun "you" rather than shifting to 
"I" in the last sentence of the first paragraph.
-"Once the structure is finished..." Recommend "Once a building's 
structure is finished" (since the preceding paragraph has been 
talking about document structure). "Web" should be capitalized if 
that's the convention we're going with throughout the document.

Guideline 1: Presentation
-"Sight, hearing, movement, and comprehension affect the ability of a 
user to access information visually, auditorily, tactilely, or 
through some combination." Suggest "Vision, hearing, movement, and 
comprehension affect a user's ability to access information by sight, 
sound, touch, or through some combination [of these]." Are "movement' 
and "comprehension" stand-ins for "motor abilities" and "cognitive 
abilities" here?
-"Screen size and interaction modalities such as keyboard instead of 
mouse, or voice, or using an assistive technology are among device 
and user-agent capabilities that affect user access." Suggest "Screen 
size and interaction modalities--such as using keyboard or voice 
input rather than a mouse, or using an assistive technology--are 
among the device and user-agent capabilities that affect user 
access." (Or have I changed the meaning here?)

I want to stop here and re-read the History of Changes more carefully 
before I proceed.
--
Jo Miller
jo@bendingline.com

Received on Thursday, 16 August 2001 08:30:19 UTC