RE: Issue 556 and 669

This is an interesting post.

This has been at "default" level for so long that we haven't looked at
whether it is really essential to access.

In long documents -- not having access to headings could make them
essentially unusable perhaps.  But we do not have any length criteria.  (but
maybe that would be a reason to have it -- and once you need to do it for
long docs,  why not mark them up for short docs too.    If they are there -
then that IS information.

Ah - I think that may be the clue.

Headers are information.  
If they are not marked up in a way that can be programmatically determined,
then it may indeed be impossible to determine that they are headers.   So
the fact that they are headers would be inaccessible.  (and important)

NOW - in techniques -- if an agent could determine that they are headers by
their formatting (after all that is all the rest of the users have)  then
that should be acceptable without requiring other markup.     That is a big
IF of course.   But it should not be hard to do soon.   Now?

 
Gregg

 -- ------------------------------ 
Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D. 
Professor - Ind. Engr. & BioMed Engr.
Director - Trace R & D Center 
University of Wisconsin-Madison 


-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of Andi Snow-Weaver
Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2004 1:21 PM
To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: Re: Issue 556 and 669






These success criteria, like the ones in the March11th working draft, mean
that a simple text document would not conform to Level 1 of WCAG 2.0 - this
mailing list being an example of something that would not conform.

Is this what we really want?

Certainly having paragraphs, headings, and lists able to be
programmatically derived makes a document more usable but omitting them
does not make them not accessible. It should not be a Level 1 requirement
that headings, paragraphs, and lists be able to be programmatically
derived.

I propose the following rewording for success criteria Level 1, # 1.

1. "Table structure and labels for interactive elements can be derived
programmatically (for example, through a markup or data model)"

I would propose adding the proposed Level 1 #1 success criteria to Level 2:

2. "Structures and relationships of the content can be derived
programmatically (for example, through a markup or data model)"

I also have a question about the proposed success criteria # 2
2. "Differentitation of content to imply additional meaning or stress, such
as
the types of emphasis commonly denoted by bold or italics, can be dervived
programmatically."

Unless the text is in an image, is it even possible to render it in bold or
italics without some kind of programmatic information? If it's not
possible, then this success criteria should be removed unless we mean to
prohibit bold text in images.

Andi
andisnow@us.ibm.com
IBM Accessibility Center
(512) 838-9903, http://www.ibm.com/able
Internal Tie Line 678-9903, http://w3.austin.ibm.com/~snsinfo

Received on Thursday, 13 May 2004 15:27:31 UTC