RE: Searching guidelines and techniques

On Tue, 3 Aug 2004, John M Slatin wrote:

> It occurs to me that it might be useful to provide a search engine 
> that would help people locate relevant information in the set of WCAG 
> 2.0 documents (Guidelines, Gateway, Techniques, Checklists). This 
> would be another navigation aid, in addition to multiple views (e.g., 
> by developer task, by content-type, by technology, by guideline, 
> etc.).

Jason responded:
<blockquote>
I think this is essentially the same as dynamically generated multiple
views, where a document is generated based on the user's selection and
sorting requirements instead of having a small number of pre-existing
versions of the documentation.

I don't know how this would work given W3C publishing rules and
practices but I can fully appreciate the attractiveness of the idea
(from a user's perspective, not from that of whoever would have to
implement the script to carry it out).
</blockquote>

John: 

I'm thinking in terms of both some set of pre-defined  options that
users could choose in order to create dynamically generated views, and
of a search engine that would in effect create a view we couldn't have
anticipated in advance.  Perhaps Shawn would help us with some user
research to identify views that our users would most like to see; a
search engine would in effect create a vew we couldn't have anticipated.
Yes, providing these features to meet users' needs would take
considerable work.  Isn't that exactly what WCAG is about? The work that
developers have to do in order to provide a satisfying user experience
for the widest possible group of users?

John

Received on Wednesday, 4 August 2004 09:11:50 UTC