- From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>
- Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 08:36:44 -0800
- To: Al Gilman <asgilman@iamdigex.net>, w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
At 9:18 AM -0500 1/28/02, Al Gilman wrote: >Think about it. Is it? It was a tongue in cheek question originally but it may be worth spending some time on. >What an easy web search returns is a good practical test for what you don't >have to document yourself. If a quick search returns a good tutorial >expansion, then save your effort for the true arcana. So, from an authorial standpoint we have several approaches we could take regarding web searches (and i assume we are not talking about site search navigation, but extra-site information): (1) Search could be used as a justification for making no changes whatsoever to the site -- "if someone doesn't know what Kia Ora means, they can just do a web search." (2) Searches could be integrated into the site content, including specialized searches on external sites. "Don't know what the term 'i18n' means? Look up common W3Cisms at the searchable W3C glossary. Search [ ] [go!]" (3) Searches could be used by the page author as a means of generating links which could be used to explain a page's content, but which are externally linked. "I have three dogs, all of which are Tibetan Mastiffs. [ <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=tibetan+mastiff"> Google for Tibetan Mastiffs</a> ]" Of these, I am most comfortable with (2) and (3). One thing that occurs to me is that I don't believe we have any guidelines on hyperlinking. The art of creating hypertext links to internal and external resources is critical to increased accessibility and usability. Too many links and we can cause confusion for users with certain disabilities; too few links and we restrict understanding. (Quick example of a useful link: linking to a dictionary definition or jargon file entry which is off-site.) I think this should at least fall into "good advice" and could be considered in a techniques document even if no checkpoint to quantitatively "count" links can be created. --Kynn -- Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com> http://kynn.com Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain http://idyllmtn.com Web Accessibility Expert-for-hire http://kynn.com/resume January Web Accessibility eCourse http://kynn.com/+d201 Forthcoming: Teach Yourself CSS in 24 Hours
Received on Monday, 28 January 2002 11:50:29 UTC