Re: WCAG conformance profiles (no plain text)

At 04:58 AM 2002-11-17, you wrote:

>I think text and EARL should be the preferred methods of making
>claims.

You should strike 'text' from that list.  In its place a
literate-programming binding of the EARL model for ease of reading is very
strongly suggested in this case, or better yet three of these.

Let me use more standard terms.  We should follow the model/view/controller
precedent set by XForms and say that EARL provides the model for conformance
claims, and that text claims should be created by a binding to that model.
The details of the binding must be available as suporting resources for the
[hyper] text form of the claim, with an indication in the text-form-of-claim
instance as to how to recover the details of the binding.

Compare with XAG 3.1.  For 'stylesheets' here read 'presentation bindings'
in the spirit of the binding language of XForms.  These could likely be
defined by their implementation in XSL as transforms to VoiceXML, to XHTML,
and to XForms-in-SVG for those who have problems processing text encoding.]

Plain text in any natural language is inaccessible to speakers of other
languages, including sign and symbol languages that we should not so lightly
disenfranchise.  Note that their preference for that language is closely
related to personal characteristics that are commonly termed disabilities.

Plain text without any asserted binding to [something approximating] the
EARL model fails to meet the standards set forth in the XAG and in this
case what William says (that the principles transcend XML encoding) is true.

More specifically, one key use of the detailed claim is as metadata
supporting selection of resources appropriate to an individual user.  This
central use is dependent on the machinable binding to the detailed and
standardized conformance model.  So plain text does not meet the need.

There must be a readily reconstructed binding of the language used in any
text claim to a formal accounting scheme supporting tracing to the terms of
the standards applied.  And the W3C preferred -- and a readily implemented
-- way to do that is with XML syntax that conforms to the principles evident
in the XAG draft.

Al

>Roberto Scano - IWA/HWG writes:
>  >
>  > I think we could use these that was discussed years ago:
>  > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/1999AprJun/0161.html
>  >
>  > Using:
>  >
>  > ((PICS-version 1.1)
>
>Two comments:
>
>1. This has been superseded by RDF/EARL: http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/
>
>2. The proposed PICS ratings for levels 1+ and 2+ don't specify which
>    checkpoints have been met beyond level 1 in the first case and
>    beyond level 2 in the second. Thus they don't constitute a
>    complete or accurate conformance claim, because someone reading
>    this claim wouldn't know which checkpoints were involved. That is
>    why I specified in my proposal that at levels 1+ and 2+ the
>    relevant checkpoints have to be identified in the profile.
>
>I think this same concern also underlies Ian's objections to the
>wording of the conformance section of the current draft. Due to an
>editorial oversight, it wasn't made clear that unless one is claiming
>conformance at one of the three levels, the additional checkpoints
>implemented at a higher level have to be listed.
>
>I think text and EARL should be the preferred methods of making
>claims.

Received on Sunday, 17 November 2002 10:58:51 UTC