RE: FW: Conformance Level Determination

Interesting point about visual arts, literature, music, etc.

A year ago we tried a little experiment in accessible electronic poetry for
a special issue of an ejournal of which I'm general editor (meaning that the
graduate students do the real work).  Included in the call for submissions
was a call for new electronic works of poetry coupled with a reminder of our
editorial policy requiring WCAG conformance (level not specified).   What I
was hoping or were new works composed from the outset with WCAG 1.0 in mind.
Of course that wasn't what came in: what came in were some elbaroately
conceived works depending heavily on Javascript and Flash, and what followed
were some interesting struggles over retrofitting those works.  Among other
things there were some interesting debates about the legitimacy of requiring
poets and other artists to conform to guidelines and standards.

Visit http://currents.cwrl.utexas.edu and follow the link to the Fall 2001
issue; my discussion of the issues engaged by the poets is in the article
called "Equivalent Alternatives?"  (I'd give you the full URL but the server
is down for the moment, for maintenance, so I can't get to it).

John

John Slatin, Ph.D.
Director, Institute for Technology & Learning
University of Texas at Austin
FAC 248C, Mail code G9600
Austin, TX 78712
ph 512-495-4288, f 512-495-4524
email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu
web http://www.ital.utexas.edu
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Charles McCathieNevile [mailto:charles@w3.org] 
Sent: Friday, May 17, 2002 8:07 am
To: Gregg Vanderheiden
Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: Re: FW: Conformance Level Determination


Well, I think there are sites that should not be able to claim conformance
because they are not accessible. Certain types of artworks )including
graphic arts, music, and some kinds of literature) are not going to be
accessible.

We should be clear that sites in general should attempt all checkpoints at
all levels, since many of them will provide benefits to some group even
without providing general accessibility.

An implication of this is we need to identify any checkpoints that depend on
others to be useful - Gian (I think) did this at the Melbourne Face to face
meeting.

Cheers

Charles

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  phone: +61 409
134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative     http://www.w3.org/WAI  fax: +33 4 92 38
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(or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex,
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Received on Friday, 17 May 2002 09:37:07 UTC