Re: [TECH] Requirements for Techniques v0.3

Lisa Seeman writes:
 > assuming that I have got the gist- 
 > 
 > I think the testability thing is overdone, and I am not sure why we need techniques to be testable. The success criteria are testable. Making the techniques testable may be overkill , (with negative and positive criteria, and test cases.....) - might reduce usability. 

It depends on the audience, I suspect. There is a strong requirement
for testability of techniques from authoring tool, evaluation and
repair tool and user agent developers, who are primary audiences of
the techniques. Also, by having multiple presentations of the material
we can create views of the techniques in which only some of the
information (namely, that relevant to a particular audience or for a
specific purpose) is included. Does this adequately address the
concern? If not, what alternatives are there?
 > 
 > Overdoing descriptions, commentary, implementation notes, links to resources or training materials, may also reduce usability. The thing should read well, give you a sense of context, similar to the old techniques. But too many links to resource 
 > 
 > will be confusing. 
Agreed. A concise exposition is always to be preferred.
 > 
 > In general I find this document hard to understand. for example: 
 > 
 > <quote> 
 > 
 > Where technologies work together (e.g., HTML and CSS), relevant joint techniques must be presented with the host technology (e.g., HTML). If techniques do not involve interactions between the two technologies, they must be presented with the techniques for their respective technology only. 
 > 
 > Techniques must state to which versions of the technology they apply, that is, describe a practice to avoid or that will have a positive accessibility impact. They may specify all versions, all versions prior to or later than a particular version, or enumerate particular versions. 
 > 
 > </quote> 
 > 
 > is obtuse, but the point is actually simple (unless I have missed the point). 
 > 
 > I think it means, for each technique state what technologies (and dependent technologies and versions of technologies) apply. 

I suspect you missed the main point, which is that where one
technology operates within a host language, the techniques for the
dependent technology, CSS for example, should be included with the
techniques for the host language rather than as a separate document.
The second point in the above passage is as you stated it, however.
While it is true that CSS works with XML, HTML was here mentioned only
as an example rather than in an effort to be exhaustive.

Received on Sunday, 5 January 2003 18:19:31 UTC