Re: Outside expert opinion on Web standards and WCAG (especially GL 1.3)

On Mon, 23 May 2005, Joe Clark wrote:

>
> I wrote back to the same experts I had canvassed before:
>
> <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2005AprJun/0145.html>
>
> I caught them up on some of the Working Group's complaints about my
> proposed wording for 1.3 ("Ensure that information, functionality,
> and structure are separable from presentation"), and asked a few
> questions:
>

These responses are interesting, but my objections to Joe's proposal still
stand unchallenged.

Also, nobody has argued that the term "semantics" is difficult to
understand, although as soon as one digs beneath the surface and tries to
develop a semantic theory it becomes quite complicated indeed, but that's
not what we're discussing here.

There are several arguments that structure alone is sufficient for 1.3:

1. Semantics of markup languages are covered by guideline 4.1. The
specification for a markup language defines both the syntax and semantics
of the language, so it is not possible to write according to spec without
using the elements of the markup language for their intended purposes and
with their intended meanings as defined in the spec.

2. Our definition of "structure" was discussed at a recent teleconference
and found sufficient to cover the required cases.

3. Requiring "semantics" to be provided as far as possible for the
content, as Joe's proposal does, is vague for the reasons I have outlined
in earlier contributions.

Canvassing outside opinion is always a valuable contribution to a
discussion, especially where it helps to illuminate difficult problems or
to point out errors,, omissions or ambiguities. On the other hand, this is
best done by asking people to review any proposal in the context of the
document as a whole (including its definitions) rather than in isolation,
as this helps to provide the context for the discussion within the working
group.

Received on Tuesday, 24 May 2005 00:23:21 UTC