RE: New rewrite of Guideline 1.1 (action item)

Jim Thatcher responded to my statement that "alt="" isn't exactly a
*text* alternative" as follows:

<blockquote>
It is! Logically, mathematically, sure it is. Logically (a word you used
in your next sentence) "" is just as much a text string as "home" is. It
happens to be the empty string of characters. I think it also is a text
equivalent (empty) that is appropriate for formatting images which carry
no information (empty information). 
</blockquote>

Point well taken; heist by my own petard.

But I'd still like to handle non-text content that doesn't provide
information or functionality in its own success criterion-- do all Web
technologies provide for use of an empty text string as the equivalent
for non-text content?  In other words, are there technologies for which
we couldn't say something like:

"For non-text content that does not provide information or
functionality, the text alternative is empty"?

I wonder if readers outside this group would understand that.


"Good design is accessible design." 
Please note our new name and URL!
John Slatin, Ph.D.
Director, Accessibility Institute
University of Texas at Austin
FAC 248C
1 University Station G9600
Austin, TX 78712
ph 512-495-4288, f 512-495-4524
email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu
web http://www.utexas.edu/research/accessibility/


 



-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Thatcher [mailto:jim@jimthatcher.com] 
Sent: Monday, June 21, 2004 10:59 am
To: John M Slatin; 'Gregg Vanderheiden'; 'Roberto Scano - IWA/HWG';
w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: RE: New rewrite of Guideline 1.1 (action item)



John Slatin:
> alt="" isn't exactly a *text* alternative

It is! Logically, mathematically, sure it is. Logically (a word you used
in your next sentence) "" is just as much a text string as "home" is. It
happens to be the empty string of characters. I think it also is a text
equivalent (empty) that is appropriate for formatting images which carry
no information (empty information). 

Jim
Accessibility, What Not to do: http://jimthatcher.com/whatnot.htm.
Web Accessibility Tutorial: http://jimthatcher.com/webcourse1.htm.


-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of John M Slatin
Sent: Monday, June 21, 2004 10:26 AM
To: Gregg Vanderheiden; Roberto Scano - IWA/HWG; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: RE: New rewrite of Guideline 1.1 (action item)


Gregg wrote:

<blockquote>
Didn't mean to move it.  It used to be in 1.2 -- and since it is dealing
with text alternative to multimedia - I talked about it being in 1.2

It can logically be in either.   If we are putting all the multimedia
clauses in 1.2 then maybe it should be moved to there. 

What do people think?   Move the NON-multimedia alternatives to 1.1 and
the
multimedia alternatives to 1.2? 

We can't move all of 1.2 to 1.1 because audio description is not a text
alternative. 
</blockquote>

John replies:
If there's consensus that multimedia should be treated in a separate
guideline (currently 1.2), then I think we should move the requirement
for a text including descriptions and transcripts to 1.2 Level 3.

But I would argue that we *can* put the multimedia criteria under 1.1.
The language I proposed for the top-level guideline uses the phrase
"equivalent alternatives" (not "text equivalents" or "text
alternatives").  The phrase "equivalent alternatives" also appears in
WCAG 1.0 Guideline 1: 

<q>Guideline 1.
Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content.</q>

Using the phrase "equivalent alternatives" in the guideline allows two
things that may be important: 1. Empty alt attributes (alt="" isn't
exactly a *text* alternative); 
2. Audio description

So I think we could logically treat multimedia under 1.1. However,
multimedia is big enough and messy enough that it may well be better to
handle it in a  guideline of its own, as we do now.  But then everything
that relates to equivalents for multimedia should be in the multimedia
guideline.

John


"Good design is accessible design." 
Please note our new name and URL!
John Slatin, Ph.D.
Director, Accessibility Institute
University of Texas at Austin
FAC 248C
1 University Station G9600
Austin, TX 78712
ph 512-495-4288, f 512-495-4524
email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu
web http://www.utexas.edu/research/accessibility/


 



-----Original Message-----
From: Gregg Vanderheiden [mailto:gv@trace.wisc.edu] 
Sent: Monday, June 21, 2004 10:03 am
To: John M Slatin; 'Roberto Scano - IWA/HWG'; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: RE: New rewrite of Guideline 1.1 (action item)


Sorry John,

Didn't mean to move it.  It used to be in 1.2 -- and since it is dealing
with text alternative to multimedia - I talked about it being in 1.2

It can logically be in either.   If we are putting all the multimedia
clauses in 1.2 then maybe it should be moved to there. 

What do people think?   Move the NON-multimedia alternatives to 1.1 and
the
multimedia alternatives to 1.2? 

We can't move all of 1.2 to 1.1 because audio description is not a text
alternative. 

 
Gregg

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


-----Original Message-----
From: John M Slatin [mailto:john_slatin@austin.utexas.edu] 
Sent: Monday, June 21, 2004 8:08 AM
To: Roberto Scano - IWA/HWG; Gregg Vanderheiden; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: RE: New rewrite of Guideline 1.1 (action item)

I also agree with Gregg's suggestion that we add an explanatory phrase
to the L3 success criterion.  Gregg suggests the following wording:

1.  For multimedia content, a separate text document is provided
(similar to a play script ) that includes both descriptions of all
important visual information and  transcripts of dialogue and other
important sounds.


I think this is fine. But Gregg adds a new wrinkle by suggesting that
this comes under Guideline 1.2-- currently it's under 1.1 Level 3.
Gregg, are you proposing that we move this criterion to Guideline 1.2?

I ask partly for clarification and partly because there's also been
discussion about moving some or all of the success criteria currently
under 1.2 into 1.1-- since multimedia is non-text content.

Thanks!
John

"Good design is accessible design." 
Please note our new name and URL!
John Slatin, Ph.D.
Director, Accessibility Institute
University of Texas at Austin
FAC 248C
1 University Station G9600
Austin, TX 78712
ph 512-495-4288, f 512-495-4524
email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu
web http://www.utexas.edu/research/accessibility/


 



-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Roberto Scano - IWA/HWG
Sent: Saturday, June 19, 2004 8:36 am
To: Gregg Vanderheiden; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: Re: New rewrite of Guideline 1.1 (action item)



Good. I agree with Gregg suggestion.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gregg Vanderheiden" <gv@trace.wisc.edu>
To: <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Sent: Saturday, June 19, 2004 3:30 PM
Subject: RE: New rewrite of Guideline 1.1 (action item)



Roberto

  This level 3 requirement would be a separate text document that
contains
BOTH the captions and the audio descriptions as text.   it is like a
script
or a screen play.    It is only level three and is intended for people
with
no usable hearing or vision.


John - all -- we spend so much time re-explaining this one that I think
we need to be very explicit about it.  I suggest.


1.2 LEVEL 3
1.  For multimedia content, a separate text document is provided
(similar to a play script) that includes both descriptions of all
important visual information and  transcripts of dialogue and other
important sounds.

IN INFORMATIVE SECTION WRITE
Example:   For individuals who have limited vision and hearing a
separate
text document is provided (similar to a play script) that includes both
descriptions of all important visual information and  transcripts of
dialogue and other important sounds.  This is also useful to indexing
engines.


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 Roberto Scano - IWA/HWG
Sent: Saturday, June 19, 2004 3:06 AM
To: John M Slatin; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: Re: New rewrite of Guideline 1.1 (action item)



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John M Slatin" <john_slatin@austin.utexas.edu>
To: <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Sent: Friday, June 18, 2004 11:19 PM
Subject: New rewrite of Guideline 1.1 (action item)


Level 3 success criteria for Guideline 1.1

1.    For multimedia content, a text document is provided that includes
descriptions of all important visual information as well as  transcripts
of dialogue and other important sounds.

Roberto Scano:
Text documents could be, for eg, also captioning documents like
RealText, QuickTime Text, SAMI? These are text files with markup...
shall we consider them "text document" ? Otherwise this means that if we
want to create captioning for a multimedia content we need to make:
- captioning
- external text file

So, for eg, do u plan to do this?

<object id="QT" classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B"
        width="320" height="270">
    <param name="src" value="magpie2_demo.qt.smil" />
    <param name="autoplay" value="true" />
    <param name="controller" value="true" />
    <p><a href="transcript.html" title="full text transcript">Transcript
for demo</a></p>

       <!-[if !IE]> ->

    <object id="QT" data="magpie2_demo.qt.smil"
            type="video/quicktime" width="320" height="270">
       <param name="autoplay" value="-1" />
       <param name="controller" value="-1" />
       <p><a href="transcript.html" title="full text
transcript">Transcript for demo</a></p>
    </object>

       <!- <![endif]->
</object>

Received on Monday, 21 June 2004 12:11:38 UTC