RE: Gateway Techniques draft: responses to two editorial notes

Wendy, responding to one of my posts yesterday::

<blockquote>

>Editorial Note:The use of "clearly" and "concisely" makes this 
>untestable.
>Will that be an issue for readers?
>[js: I hope not-- the idea here is to provide guidance that helps
people 
>understand what they need to do. We could add a note saying that
clarity 
>and concision require human judgment, and that such judgment should be 
>informed by at least informal feedback from users, or at best by formal

>user testing.]

WAC: My intent with this note was to get feedback from people about what

they expected to see at the gateway level.  Thus, I'm tempted to leave
the 
note as it is and see if we get any responses. Thoughts?
</blockquote>
John: I agree that feedback from the list is important! But I do want to
make a case for allowing the Gateway document to discuss techniques and
strategies that may not be testable, or, in cases where techniques may
produce results that aren't *machine*-testable, to include suggestions
about testing techniques as well.
Wendy again:
<blockquote>
>Editorial Note: In this draft, part C of the Level 1 success criterion 
>for
>Guideline 1.1 is divided into two techniques this one (music without
words)
>and the next (visual art). Is this confusing? Should they merge into
one?
>[js: I think it would be more confusing to treat the tasks of
describing 
>non-vocal audio and visual art somewhat differently-- the descriptive 
>techniques and vocabularies are very different, and so is the issue of 
>what gets "displayed," since you can't "display" audio. We may need to
add 
>a note to this effect.]

I interpret this as, "keep the two techniques separate because the 
strategies and vocabularies are different."  Is that what you intended
or 
were you aiming for something else?
</blockquote>
John:
Yes, I intended to say keep these items separate because the strategies
and techniques are different." In another message to the list yesterday
[1], I added some other thoughts about this issue, which I'll paste in
below for convenience' sake:
<blockquote>
There are significantly different requirements for different types of
audio content, and I think they're covered by different items under 1.1
L1 SC 1.  In my judgment, spoken-word audio would be covered by ther
requirement to provide "the same information" as the non-text content--
in this case, a text transcript that includes the words in the
recording.  For non-vocal music, the minimum requirement is for a text
label that identifies the piece.  Typically this would be provided via
alt text on a graphical link to the audio file (such as an icon of an
ear or something) or by a a text link.  In some contexts (e.g., a
history of music or a music review) it might be appropriate to include
an additional text description of the piece.  This could be done in
several ways, including nested <object> elements, etc.  In any case, I
think we can solve the problem by dealing with spoken-word audio under
the requirement to provide the same information and with non-vocal music
under the requirement to identify non-text content that creates a
specific sensory experience.
</blockquote>
[1]http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2004JulSep/0248.html#s
tart
Hope this helps!
John
-- 
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
http://www.w3.org/WAI/
/--

Received on Thursday, 29 July 2004 15:37:47 UTC