Re: FW: Conformance Level Determination

Here are some ideas that occurred to me upon reading Gregg's
conformance analysis: as we proceed down the levels, the
semantics that must be represented in the content become increasingly
sophisticated. In general newer technologies are more capable of
fulfilling these requirements than older technologies, though the
difference isn't really chronological, but rather associated with the
way in which the content is represented and the attention paid to
device-independence and "multi-purposing" as some call it, in the design
of the technology. This can be regarded either as a constraint on the
levels themselves, that is a requirement that level 1 must be achievable
with specified types of technology, or as a consequence of other
decisions that we have already made on grounds of importance, namely
that higher quality access is achieved as the semantic complexity of the
content (and the concomitant processing capability of the software
tools) increases.

Thus there arguably exists a natural relationship between the success
criteria themselves, as we proceed down the conformance levels, and
the sophistication of the support provided by the technology. I think
this might be a useful observation as we discuss guideline 5.

Received on Wednesday, 15 May 2002 20:34:03 UTC