Re: REF 1.1a - Add definition to 1.1 for ability to be expressed in words

>The phrase "ability to be expressed in words" is never defined.

It shouldn't even be in there. WAI, as ever, believes that the only 
true Web sites are those filled to the margins with words! words! 
words!

I don't support an exemption for, say, videos of symphony orchestras 
playing. Anyone with access to American TV can watch _Great 
Performances_ on PBS to see how amenable even wordless music is to 
captioning. You don't have to add a *lot* of captions, but it isn't 
inimical to the entire procedure.

>Suggest that in the definitions section, a new definition be added 
>which would read:
>
>Ability to be expressed in words
>
>This refers to content that can be expressed accurately and 
>unambiguously in a reasonable number of words

"Accurately and unambiguously"?

Ever tried interpreting a contract?

You realize this means that somone could come along-- probably a 
proponent of a certain disability group-- and accuse the page author 
of inaccurately and ambiguously expressing his or her content? That 
would be another way of saying the author's claimed conformance is 
untrue. And where would a discussion like that end?

>  (for example, diagrams, charts, illustrations, etc.)

Those are the canonical visual forms that *cannot* be summed up in 
words! words! words!

I wonder in what year WAI is ever going to figure out that people use 
"diagrams, charts, illustrations" for a reason. A picture is worth 
well more than a thousand words. You can crunch thousands of data 
points in a log scale that brilliantly and quickly communicates the 
relationships among the data in a graph. You simply cannot be assured 
that such a relationship, or set of relationships (Cf. charts with 
multiple axes and error bars), can be epitomized in words.

"Diagrams, charts, illustrations" are not bad habits or deficiencies 
that must be legislated out of existence. They are not a weakness of 
Web content that WAI must grapple with, like some kind of disease. It 
is incontrovertible that certain "diagrams, charts, illustrations" 
cannot be made functionally equivalent in text. *That's why we 
illustrate*.

>  Content such as a musical performance or visual artwork is 
>considered "content that can not be expressed in words," since this 
>type of content relies heavily on the visual (or auditory) 
>experience.

Well, so do movies, TV, and video, and we caption those pretty well.


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     Joe Clark | joeclark@joeclark.org
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Received on Friday, 11 July 2003 14:17:13 UTC