- From: Michael Cooper <michaelc@watchfire.com>
- Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 11:21:22 -0400
- To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
This thread has been illuminating because it's showing that there are two separate issues which have been confounded. Perhaps it will be useful to treat them separately. 1) There is the issue of whether a text alternative for non-text content should be required if that content itself is accessible. 2) Then there is the question of how widely supported the accessibility features of a non-text format must be before the first question becomes relevant. The second question is a tangent off the first one, but one we need to address. Somebody pointed out that as technologies evolve, there will always be the situation that there are new technologies that are not yet universally supported, or whose accessibility features aren't universally supported. So we need a stance on that in the guidelines. Separately, we also need a position for the case of non-text technologies that are in fact universally supported. I will leave aside the argument of which present-day technologies (if any) may fall into that category - that is an issue we will have to wrestle with in techniques but shouldn't impact the guidelines. Here are the steps I think we should take: A) I think members of the group will agree that non-text technologies that are not accessible, whether for lack of accessibility features or for lack of support for the accessibility features on some os/browser/at combinations require text alternatives. Mainly I'm just reiterating that here, it's already in the guidelines, but if there's disagreement about that here's a forum to raise it. B) I propose that, if a non-text technology is accessible, we not require text alternatives. I would be interested to hear if there is disagreement with that. Otherwise I will write up a more complete proposal around that and we can discuss the merits more completely. C) Then we need to struggle with a way the guidelines describe the way of determining whether a particular non-text technology fits into category A or B above. Some have said that the technology and its accessibility features must be supported in all Web browsers and AT combinations before it is considered accessible. Others have said that is an impossible standard, as the Web is diverse and we can't control or even know about the variety of user agents out there, and what we need is a way of saying enough user agents support the technology and its accessibility features that most users are covered. One response to this is that "most" is not enough and therefore proposal B above is a non-starter, and all non-text technologies require text alternatives. That brings us full circle to the question that started this thread. Perhaps it would be useful for people to provide their opinions on each of those three steps separately. The separate answers don't have to support each other; I would consider it acceptable to say to B that you agree with the principle, but agree in C that the principle can't be activated and therefore B is meaningless. That's not the only combination of answers of course, just an example of one kind of useful even though internally inconsistent response people might make. I'm carefully steering clear of mentioning any example technologies here. The examples raised earlier sparked some of the discussion that led here and was useful, but I'd like to avoid getting caught up in particular technologies now as we try to resolve this general issue. Michael
Received on Thursday, 22 July 2004 11:21:43 UTC