definition of accessible: text is convenient

The semantic meaning or concept underlying images is just as transferable,
as texts are translate-able.
The rich cultural context that images retain, means that their descriptions
may well have no logical relationship.
This adds rather than detracts from their importance, it just is not so
convenient in a lexical theatre.
Please take a look @ from a recent posting by David Poehlman
http://www.herodios.com/atsign.html

Art in all its forms has much of this, and as a group WAI is significantly
short of artists.

--


http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/xmlgl#PB a distinct text is king bias.
3 problems:

1 >A document is accessible if it can be equally understood by its targeted
audience regardless of the device used to access it.
2 >having machine readable assertions of semantics .....is paramount for
pervasive access.
3 >whereas non-textual content is often confined to a certain set of devices

1
>A document is accessible if it can be equally understood by its targeted
audience regardless of the device used to access it.

This seems too narrow a definition, in view of the various discussions on
gl. (ie who is doing the targeting). Perhaps:
A document is accessible if it can be understood by anyone, regardless of
the device used to access it.

Some might argue that a voiceless pda is useless to the blind, but that is a
minor niggle, in any case the line that follows it:
>An accessible document is also defined as conforming to the Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines.

stands well enough on its own.

2
>This semantics knowledge can be provided through human readable
documentation of course, but having machine readable assertions of semantics
that can then be used to present the document in various media is paramount
for pervasive access (that is, you don't need a programmer, you just need a
program). Enabling others to map from your language to existing ones, or
vice versa, is a useful accessibility feature.

This glosses over the great difficulty we are having defining machine
readable graphical objects.Work in this area is very useful, for all of us.
I dispute the use of the word paramount as far too strong, it is convenient
or do-able and nothing more.

3
>Web content providers must able to offer alternative versions of their
content if they wish to do so (as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
tell them to do so). Textual alternatives, for instance, can be repurposed
for many different output devices, whereas non-textual content is often
confined to a certain set of devices. Thus, by allowing and encouraging
synchronized textual alternatives, you allow your tagset to be more
interoperable, and hence accessible.

I suggest removing "whereas non-textual content is often confined to a
certain set of devices" as unnecessarily biased, and trying to maintain a
more neutral media bias.

Not sure if the meeting is still being held?? please inform asap.
Could probably make Monday+Tuesday if desirable

jonathan chetwynd
IT teacher (LDD)
j.chetwynd@btinternet.com
http://www.peepo.com         "The first and still the best picture directory
on the web"

Received on Saturday, 15 September 2001 06:35:02 UTC