Re: 3.1: Proposal with links to Guide docs

> I've also tried to do some work with the notion of alternative
> representations of text content-- the flip side of alt text, in a sense.
> So at levels 2 and 3 there are SC that call for graphical and/or
> spoken-word representations of information otherwise presented in text,

I've been objecting to this for three years (it's a Chaalsism that is 
apparently unkillable), as have many others, including another blind 
person, Greg Rosmaita. You can*not* force people to draw or speak or 
perform a solo acoustic guitar performance just to meet WCAG.

I am not interested in the claimed counterargument that everybody can come 
up with *something*. Not everybody can. Even the majority of people can't. 
It takes nothing more than a free blogging account and a booking on a 
free, shared library computer to create Web content. It takes significant 
knowledge and experience to illustrate or create music, and even the 
"simple" case of spoken text requires hardware and disc space.

How does a blind person illustrate a text document?
How does a deaf person speak it?

What *are* you people talking about?

If those objections, which you have *not* gotten past and are rather 
unlikely to, do not sink the proposal itself, there's the fact that you 
have to turn around and WRITE TEXT EQUIVALENTS for the GRAPHICAL 
EQUIVALENTS you just created. When does it end?

> and at L3 there is a success criterion that calls for signed video of
> key pages and/or passages.

We can*not* require *translations* of Web content. I don't know how much 
clearer I can make this to you people. Sign language is a *translation* 
and is not an alternate rendering in the same language the way captions 
and alt texts are. Require sign language and suddenly someone could come 
along and *legitimately* demand translation of all Web content into, say, 
Ukrainian. Because, after all, their "disability" is an inability to 
understand the source language, isn't it? Just like a deaf person.

Oh, and by the way-- *which* sign language would be used? For English 
writing, for example?

What if there *is* no sign language available, or the only sign language 
is spoken by a few people in a remote community, as is actually the case 
in Nunavut, and there isn't even so much as an interpreter available?

Finally, there won't *be* a Level 3 in WCAG 2 no matter how much Gregg 
likes it.

-- 

     Joe Clark | joeclark@joeclark.org
     Accessibility <http://joeclark.org/access/>
       --This.
       --What's wrong with top-posting?

Received on Wednesday, 4 May 2005 16:20:00 UTC