Proposal: Delete SC about contracted words

Dear fellow group members,

Currently, we have guideline 3.1, level 3, SC 1:
The meaning of contracted words can be programmatically determined.

I think this is already covered by other guidelines and propose to delete
this SC. In level 2, SC 2 of the same guideline, we require:
A. The meanings and pronunciations of all words in the content can be
programmatically located.

Since contracted words are still words, this SC requires their meaning can
be programatically located, though there may be multiple meanings for that
word. 

In level 3, SC 2, of the same guideline, we require:
B. Where a word has multiple meanings and the intended meaning is not the
first in the associated dictionary(s), then additional markup or another
mechanism is provided for determining the correct meaning.

Combining A and B allows you to determine the meaning of contracted words.
Therefore, I propose to delete the success criteria about contracted words. 

It may be that I'm unaware of an important accessibility barrier with
contracted words that I don't do justice with this proposal. If so, please
let me know what I'm missing. I have asked for examples that show
accessibility problems with contracted words but haven't seen or heard any
that clarified the specific accessibility problems with them for me. I
understand that obscure contractions may be hard to understand, but that's
true for difficult uncontracted words as well and is why we require that you
can programmatically locate the meaning of every word at level 2. 

I prefer it if we formulate our SC in broad terms ("word with multiple
meanings") that are applicable to different linguistic features rather than
trying to provide a specific SC for every single linguistic feature that
might cause accessibility problems. 

Yvette Hoitink
Heritas, Enschede, the Netherlands
E-mail: y.p.hoitink@heritas.nl
WWW: http://www.heritas.nl

Received on Friday, 28 May 2004 05:57:32 UTC