- From: Shawn Lawton Henry <shawn@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 15:43:31 -0500
- To: <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Below is some related information on a diagram and document to explain the relationship between WCAG2 documents and the design of the user interaction between the docments. What Sailesh sent to the list can inform a WCAG intro page, explained below. As part of the WAI site redesign[1], we determined the need for introduction pages to provide high-level info for WCAG and other areas.[2] A few motivations for these are: - People have difficulty understanding the relationship between the current WCAG 1 guidelines and techniques documents. (e.g., a usability testing participant who rated herself as expert in accessibility did not have a clear concept of the documents, and often when I've showed a simple diagram of the relationship in a presentation, I get "oh! now I get it!" reactions) - Usability testing confirmed that people were overwhelmed, confused, and turned-off by the front matter of /TR/ docs (this version, latest version, previous version, editors, copyright, abstract, status of this document... "finally I find the contents") and the number of different documents. They did not recognize when the moved from one document to another, e.g., when follow link from guidelines to techniques. They got lost, not knowing where they were or how to get back to where they had been before. For WCAG1.0, the simple diagram I show has "WCAG 1.0" with an arrow pointing to "Techniques Gateway" and from there 3 arrows to "Core Techniques", "HTML Techniques", "CSS Techniques" -- just that simple thing made a lot of difference to people, because they had not been able to figure out the different documents and their relationships- especially confusing seems to be when they clicked on techniques they expected to get some real content, and were baffled by being in the middle of what is just links (the gareway without content). Per the discussion in the techniques teleconferences the last two weeks, I think we need something like that for WCAG2 -- for later to help explain to users, and for now to help with development and design. Additional notes (on ideas, not necessarily consensus!) from this week's telecon: Question: Do we want people to read the general before the technology-specific? Answer: Yes. Primarily want to encourage people to read the general before they read the technology-specific. At the same time, also want it to be easy for experienced people to skip the general and go right to a specific. How that might inform design: - guidelines doc links to general techniques doc - general techniques doc shows the general info, and makes it easy for user to skip the text and jump to technology-specific techniques (e.g., user doesn't have to scroll through text to get to links) - technology-specific techniques have clear link to the related general info (for those who somehow get to the technology-specific without having seen the general) - traffic cop might be a shortcut interface for experienced users, but not in the main flow ~ shawn Shawn Lawton Henry W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) e-mail: shawn@w3.org phone: +1.617.253.8788 about: http://www.w3.org/People/Shawn/ [1] WAI site redesign project: http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/2003/redesign.html [2] Mini, informal requirements for Intro pages: http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/UCD/intro-pages Very early, rough draft of UAAG intro pages (without nav, style, etc.): http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/sketchpad/uaag.html
Received on Thursday, 1 July 2004 16:43:44 UTC