Proposal: Authoring tools

Hi list,

I took an action item to propose a simpler formulation for a new section
about authoring tools. See
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2004JulSep/0389.html for the
original suggestion by the ATAG working group. 

<proposal 1>
Authoring tools

A large part of web content is created using authoring tools. These tools
often determine how the web content is implemented, by making authoring
decisions directly or by presenting choices to the author. We understand
that the level of accessibility of the web content produced by authoring
tools will depend on the support of the accessibility guidelines by these
tools, even though we recommend that all authors become familiar with the
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Developers of authoring tools can help to make their tools more aware of the
Web Accessibility Guidelines by following the #Authoring Tool Accessibility
Guidelines#. We encourage users and purchasers of authoring tools to
consider the conformance to the #Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines#
when selecting tools. 
</proposal 1>

The texts between ## would be links to the ATAG. 

Basically, I re-wrote some sentences to make them shorter and easier to
understand, in some cases using active voice instead of passive. I have
tried not to change the meaning or intentions of the original text.

I used "the way the web content is implemented" instead of "nature of the
web content" because I think AT do NOT affect the nature of the content
(e.g. a genealogical website versus a gallery website) but only the
implementation of the content.

I deleted the part about the implementation techniques for ATAG being
available, because I think that would be confusing to many of our audience
and I think AT developers (a secondary audience of our guidelines) will have
no problems finding the information by following the ATAG link.

A problem I see both with the original proposal and in mine is that it
sounds like we're saying "we recommend that you become familiar with WCAG
but we understand it if your content doesn't comply if you use a non-ATAG
AT". That sounds like a large loophole/excuse for people. Perhaps we should
instead say something like 

"We understand that the level of accessibility of the web content produced
by authoring tools will depend on the support of the accessibility
guidelines by these tools. We recommend that all authors become familiar
with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines because this will help in
creating accessible content and some of the guidelines may not be covered by
the authoring tool."

Yvette Hoitink
Heritas, Enschede, the Netherlands
E-mail: y.p.hoitink@heritas.nl
WWW: http://www.heritas.nl

Received on Thursday, 26 August 2004 21:51:44 UTC