RE: RE: working definition of baseline

Hi Jason,

I am confused.  If we aren't talking about accessibility - then I'm not sure
what we are or should be talking about.   Actually - we are only chartered
to talk about accessibility.  So if we aren't talking about it..... 

Let me try to see if I can figure this out for myself out loud.    

First - we have to say "baseline" for what.  

Soooooo - how about this.

<proposal> 

Baseline User Agent Assumptions.

Any set of technologies that are assumed to be supported by the user agent
and enabled (turned on) when determining if the content would meet the WCAG
2.0 guidelines (at any level). 

NOTE 1: Some examples of entities that may set baselines that an author may
have to follow include the author, their company, a customer and government
entities. 

NOTE 2: In the techniques document we plan to discuss techniques for
conforming to WCAG 2.0 based on three different baselines (i.e. assumptions
of technologies supported and active in user agents).
 
</proposal>


Gregg

 -- ------------------------------ 
Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D. 
Professor - Ind. Engr. & BioMed Engr.
Director - Trace R & D Center 
University of Wisconsin-Madison 


-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of Jason White
Sent: Friday, May 06, 2005 11:00 PM
To: John M Slatin
Cc: lguarino@adobe.com; Web Content Guidelines
Subject: RE: RE: working definition of baseline


John M Slatin writes:
 >
 > <new NewProposal>
 > Any  minimum set of technologies assumed in the design of accessible Web
> content  > to be supported by, and enabled in, all user agents capable of
providing  > a  > user interface for the content. 
 > </newNewProposal>

I agree with the use of "any" in the above, but not with the inclusion of
any reference to accessibility in the definition of baseline. Every piece of
Web content, whether accessible or not (whatever one means by
"accessible") has a baseline. Having recognized this, we can then evaluate
in particular cases whether we think it's a good baseline or a
bad/inappropriate/unreasonable baseline; but let's not build the "goodness"
aspect into what we mean by "baseline". It's a lot clearer if we can speak
about good and bad baselines, instead of having to say that someone who has
made inappropriate technology assumptions in designing a piece of Web
content hasn't chosen a baseline at all. What we should instead be able to
say is that they've chosen an unreasonable baseline - that we think their
choice of baseline was unsuitable to their content and audience, etc.

I apologize for making the same point repeatedly in this discussion; I am
simply trying to demonstrate the confusions we get into if we include some
sort of normative requirement in the definition of "baseline".

Received on Sunday, 8 May 2005 21:48:35 UTC