the emperor's clothes (or lack thereof)

/* changed subject line from "Re: Structure of deliverables: are we too PC
for our own good?" */

AG: Let me explain what I perceive as the significance of what Kelly Ford
said.

AG: Kelly has shown us that The Emperor Has No Clothes.

AG: Labeling active elements adequately, so that the user can be oriented to
what they do, in whatever delivery context the user happens to be operating
in, is the number one most important problem to be reformed on the World
Wide Web today.

AG: If Kelly Ford, who understands the domain of this document deeply
already before reading it, can't find the advice for how to fix this number
one problem in this document, it is time to set it aside  and think again
about what we think we are doing, here.

GJR: which is the point of public review - wasn't kelly's concern adequately
addressed via the response archived at (long URI warning):
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2001JulSep/0843
which contains a proposed addition to the checkpoint text, which has been
added (along with kelly's comments) to (long URI warning):
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2001/09/20010824-WD-comments.html

it's not a case of the emperor not having any clothes, but of everyone
gawking at him as he parades around clad only in a blueprint decorated with
small samples of material.

on the other hand, i think that the topics that you and bill raised need to
be addressed by the WG, as we are at a cross-roads, where we are presented
with a stark choice - continue with the current plan, or come up with
something else altogether, but first it must be ascertained if the
foundations we have laid so far for a W3C Technical Recommendation are
strong enough to bear the burden of scrutiny, or if they crumble beneath our
feet. we also need to consider whether some of us should be working
hand-in-glove with other W3C working groups (such as Voice Browser) to
ensure that accessibility concerns are addressed front-and-center in
canonical specs, and not "merely" relegated to a technology-specific
module/layer of WCAG2 - accessibility features, concerns, and requirements
need to be bolted into specs and their conformance model as normative
features/functionality of the spec, and not relegated solely to WAI
materials.

gregory.

Received on Monday, 10 September 2001 15:16:00 UTC