Re: Thinking aloud...Definitions (pre-Guideline 1.1 summary)

Thanks for doing this - I think may be good (if not already done) to 
investigate any and all pre-existing definitions of any of these terms 
within W3C (and possibly even outside W3C?), since I feel many of these 
terms may enjoy frequent usage (although possibly in different 
contexts),  to see if any pre-existing definitions can be reused for WCAG 
purposes via reference (which I think may be beneficial for harmonization 
of W3C WGs/Activities?).  If reuse is not possible, and WCAG specifications 
need to extend/modify pre-existing definitions, then perhaps WCAG 
documentation should include explanations of why any pre-existing 
definitions may need to be extended/modified to suit WCAG's 
purposes?    BTW, QASpecGL [1] has a section on defining and using 
terminology, which mentions re-use in other specifications.

Best wishes,
Tim Boland NIST

[1]:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-qaframe-spec-20041122/#specify-conformance-need

At 12:08 PM 4/20/2005 -0400, you wrote:
>Note: These are "pre-proposals" and issues that I'd like feedback on 
>before continuing with my issue summary and proposals for Guideline 1.1 - 
>I want to gauge people's reactions to a few ideas before doing more work. 
>Guideline 1.1 is dependent on definitions that are in flux, therefore, 
>I've  included draft definitions to tease out assumptions and 
>implications.  I'm looking for feedback so that I can generate 
>proposals.  To start, I am focusing only on Guideline 1.1, Level 1, SC 1 
>"For all non-text content that is functional, such as graphical links or 
>buttons, text alternatives serve the same purpose as the non-text content."
>
>Issues:
>
>   1. No definitions for content or explicitly associated
>   2. Proposed definitions for text, unicode seem fairly
>      uncontroversial, need to discuss/close [see below]
>   3. Definition of "functionality" includes "convey information" and we
>      separate "provide function" from "convey information" in Guideline
>      1.1 Level 1 Success Criteria 1 and 2.  Therefore, either the SC
>      need to change or the definition of functionality needs to change.
>   4. Non-text content definition has not been solidified (previous
>      proposals were controversial - partly because baseline wasn't
>      ironed out). Historically, we have shied away from including
>      widgets in the definition of non-text content to avoid Guideline
>      1.1 requiring text alternatives for all widgets (i.e., to avoid
>      noscript for every script).  However, I'd like to investigate the
>      idea of "widgets" as non-text content and how that relates to new
>      approaches with Guideline 4.2 and baseline.
>
>Draft definitions (not quite proposals):
>
>    * text - A sequence of characters. Characters are those included in
>      the Unicode character set. Refer to Characters (in Extensible
>      Markup Language (XML) 1.1) for more information about the accepted
>      character range.
>    * Unicode - Unicode is a universal character set that defines all
>      the characters needed for writing the majority of living languages
>      in use on computers. For more information refer to the Unicode
>      Consortium or to Tutorial: Character sets & encodings in XHTML,
>      HTML and CSS produced by the W3C Internationalization Working
>      Group.  [Additional clarification that gets a bit "success
>      criteria-ish": This does not mean that all documents should be
>      encoded in Unicode. It means that documents should only contain
>      characters defined by Unicode. Any encoding may be used for your
>      document as long as it is properly declared and is a subset of the
>      Unicode repertoire.]
>    * content -  Information that forms Web sites and Web applications:
>      the code and markup that define the structure, presentation, and
>      interaction, as well as text, images, and sounds that convey
>      information to the end-user.  based on definition in "Essential
>      Components of Web 
> Accessibility"      <http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/components>
>    * functional - performing or able to perform an action in response
>      to user input. [based on Merriam Webster's Medical Dictionary entry]
>    * non-text content - content that is not represented by a Unicode
>      character or sequence of Unicode characters
>          o functional non-text content - content (information including
>            markup, code, images, etc) that is capable of performing an
>            action in response to user input and is not represented by a
>            Unicode character or sequence of Unicode characters.
>
>If these terms are defined in these ways (or something similar) then
>non-text content includes:
>
>   1. "widgets" that are created by attaching an event handler to an image
>   2. groups of widgets that form a Web application or a flash application.
>
>For example, the flickr "organize" application (see attached screen shot, 
>description below).  If the author chooses a baseline that does not rely 
>on flash, he or she will need to provide a label for the flash object 
>(e.g., "Organize photos") as well as provide a non-flash alternative that 
>allows the user to browse all photos, browse by date, view sets of photos, 
>create a new set, view groups, and search for photos by tags (i.e., all of 
>the functionality available via the flash app).  If the author chooses a 
>baseline that relies on flash, he or she will need to provide a label for 
>the flash object (e.g., "Organize photos") as well as ensure that all of 
>the internal flash objects are accessible. These include:  browse tab, 
>search tab, timeline object, create new set button, etc. In other words, 
>each of the internal objects should be labeled according to guideline 1.1 
>and are keyboard accessible according to guideline 2.1.  [tee-hee - 
>recursion.]
>If Guideline 1.1 Level 1 SC 1 were reworded, "For all non-text content 
>that is functional, text alternatives identify the non-text content in 
>such a way that the label may serve the same purpose as the non-text 
>content.  If the non-text content is a collection of non-text content, 
>each of the internal objects (or groups of objects) are also labeled 
>(within reason)."  "within reason" is not testable, but I use it to 
>clarify that if you have an SVG image that is a collection of arcs, you 
>don't need to label every arc, only the whole. However, if you have a 
>flash application you label the app as well as each widget within it. 
>Perhaps a better clarification is to label all functional elements within 
>a functional element (at least for this criterion and then deal with 
>"convey information" in success criterion #2). While this wording is 
>rough, I think this approach allows us to address  some of the issues we 
>have with Guideline 4.2 and accessibility of web apps (versus user agents) 
>and gives us the appropriate "wiggle room" for authors to choose different 
>baselines and sets of techniques.
>Thoughts?
>--wendy
>
>Description of the attached screen shot:
>A screen shot of flickr's "Organize" application in a Firefox window.
>This description is only of the contents of the firefox viewport and not 
>of the firefox UI.
> From top to bottom, left to right of the viewport:
>Photos: [link] Yours, [link] Upload, [link] Organize, [link] Your 
>Contacts', [link] Everyone's
>Flickr logo
>The "organize" application has two frames each with 2 tabs across the 
>top.  The left frame has Browse and Search tabs.  Browse is active, Search 
>is inactive. The right frame has "Your sets" and "Your groups" 
>tabs.  "Your sets" is active.
>Within the Search frame is a button, "Load all photos." Below that is an 
>large area with the text, "If you'd like to load all your photos, you can 
>do that with the link below. Or, you can load photos from a specific date 
>range using the date selector widget even further below. Or, you can 
>search for photos by clicking the "search" tab above."  followed by the 
>link "Load all your photos."  Below that is the "date selector widget" 
>which is a timeline that starts with 12/20/04 and goes to 4/19/05 in 
>weekly increments.  There are yellow bars below some of the dates - a 
>longer bar indicates a larger number of photos published on that day. 
>Below that are 2 checkboxes: [unchecked] Use date taken instead of posted 
>and [checked] Do the zoom thing on thumbnails.
>Within the "your sets" frame is the text "1 set [link] reorder them" and a 
>thumbnail labeled "moc moc (6 photos)."  At the bottom of the frame is "1 
>set [link] reorder them" and a "create new set" button.
>
>--
>wendy a chisholm
>world wide web consortium
>web accessibility initiative
>http://www.w3.org/WAI/
>/--
>
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 20 April 2005 20:32:34 UTC