RE: Agenda

Cynthia,

         You are on the money -- that is one of the elephants in the needs 
conflict issue. I was thinking of those who design content for a specific 
audience (such as teachers),  who can use content that is highly 
appropriate for the target audience, but making it available to all would 
be an undue burden (e.g. making multi-media scripts, etc.) ... if the 
author's needs aren't addresses the choice is to go ahead and ignore 
accessibility, which means not everyone can use the content, or just skip 
the idea and no one gets the content...

                                                 Anne

At 05:27 PM 10/4/01 -0700, Cynthia Shelly wrote:
>On the Author and user needs conflict issue...
>
>When we originally discussed it, the example was distracting
>advertising.  The author is intentionally changing the user's focus from
>what the user considers to be the primary content (the news article) to
>what the author considers to be the primary content (the ad).  From the
>author's viewpoint, he has made his primary content (the ad) *MORE*
>accessible with by adding dancing hamsters (or whatever).
>
>This is a real need for the author.  If he is not successful at this, he
>won't get as many advertisers, or his advertisers won't pay as much, and
>he'll go out of business, taking his secondary content (the news
>article) with him.
>
>The user probably won't see it this way, and will find that he has been
>distracted from the primary content (the news article) by the secondary
>content (the ad).
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Charles McCathieNevile [mailto:charles@w3.org]
>Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2001 8:30 AM
>To: Jason White
>Cc: Web Content Guidelines
>Subject: Re: Agenda
>
>
>Probable regrets. Here are my thoughts on the agenda items:
>
>I only agree with R1 as long as R2 is also a matter for consensus.
>
>N3 -  normative is determined by objectiveness  -- ease of establishing
>consensus on fulfillment.
>
>Seems to me too vaguely / briefly written. I understand it as meaning
>that a requirement for being normative is that we can develop success
>criteria where there is general agreement in the group on those
>criteria, and (implicitly, but very significantly) on whether various
>test cases pass or fail.  (I also see N3, N4 and N5 as essentially the
>same thing, although I don't think that hurts. It means that if someone
>else thinks we can have one but can not have another of them then there
>isn't consensus on what they mean)
>
>Big issues:
>
>Author and user needs conflict, user and user needs conflict.
>
>In general we need to ensure that user needs are met, and we need to
>work as hard as we can to find ways of doing this that meet authors
>needs. We need to understand whether author needs are needs
>(communicating information) or desires (having a site use a particular
>technology for demonstration, no matter what the consequences). If they
>are desires, then it is acceptable that they lose in a conflict, but
>where possible we should seek win-win solutions to the problems. In many
>cases these exist.
>
>User versus user needs is something we need to look at on a case by case
>basis. But it is also a test we need to apply to every normative
>requirement anyway - if this is done is some group being cut out?
>(assuming that the rest of the requirements are applied makes this
>easier, but makes conformance as opposed to simple reporting more
>important)
>
>Conformance:
>I have not had time to follow the most recent thread, but I do have a
>number of thoughts about conformance. Hopefully I will be able to follow
>up in the next couple of days.
>
>cheers
>
>Charles

Anne Pemberton
apembert@erols.com

http://www.erols.com/stevepem
http://www.geocities.com/apembert45

Received on Friday, 5 October 2001 07:12:16 UTC