RE: Text being imperceptible (allegedly)

CSS3 text is currently under development, and issues related to CSS2.1 are 
still being processed.   Are there 
accessibility issues related to CSS3 (or 2.1) text that should be brought to 
the attention of the CSS WG re: supporting perceivable text (as mentioned in 
excerpted message following)?  Perhaps at a future CSS WG telecon (which 
I attend)?

Thanks and best wishes
Tim Boland NIST

Quoting John M Slatin <john_slatin@austin.utexas.edu>:

> 
> Joe Clark wrote:
> 
> <blockquote>
> Now, can somebody tell me how text-- which the Working Group from time 
> immemorial has privileged over every other data type on the Web-- is 
> suddenly not perceivable? You've got guidelines coming out the wazoo 
> </blockquote>
> 
> Joe is responding to some notes in the minutes to this morning's
> Techniques Task Force call.
> 
> Just for the record, I did not say that text *is* not perceivable.  I
> said that the guidelines as written make an unspken *assumption* that
> text is perceivable *by default*, and I suggested that it might not be a
> good idea to rely on such an unspoken assumption.
> 
> There are many things that can happen to make text imperceivable. Some
> of these are deliberate (display: none, for example, or deliberate
> choices to make text- and background colors the same).  Others may be
> accidental (or the same techniques may have unintended consequences.)
> 
> Text may become illegible for some users if it can't be scaled, etc.,
> etc.
> 
> We have guidelines and SC about making many other things perceivable.
> It's interesting that we *assume* text is always already perceptible.
> 
> "Good design is accessible design"
> John Slatin, Ph.D.
> Senior Accessibility Specialist
> RampWEB, Inc.
> phone +1.512.266.6189 email jslatin@rampweb.com
> www.rampweb.com 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
> Behalf Of Joe Clark
> Sent: Wednesday, June 01, 2005 3:41 PM
> To: WAI-GL
> Subject: Text being imperceptible (allegedly)
> 
> 
> 
> >From the minutes today:
> 
> <http://www.w3.org/2005/06/01-wai-wcag-minutes.html>
> 
> >   bg: tech about using display:none and positioning to create
> invisible
> >   labels
> >
> >   js: have issues with display:none
> 
> It's in the spec and people can use it.
> 
> >   mc: also have issues with display:none; also it is a tech to work
> >   around WCAG GL's that people don't like
> 
> Three real-world examples, please?
> 
> 
> >   js: we need a sc for making text percievable, we are making a
> default
> >   assumption that text is accessible, which is not good [...]
> >   js: yeah, we need a guideline, that deals with the inacurate
> >   assumption about text being perceivable but I don't want to
> >   proliferate
> >   guideline
> 
> Now, can somebody tell me how text-- which the Working Group from time 
> immemorial has privileged over every other data type on the Web-- is 
> suddenly not perceivable? You've got guidelines coming out the wazoo 
> requiring us to write (using text) in an understandble way; use text 
> equivalents; and even use only a certain set of character encodings. The
> 
> Working Group is cuckoo for text. And suddenly it's deemed not 
> perceivable?
> 
> Is this a way of exaggerating obscure, rarely-seen edge cases-- like
> styling text with display: none or identical foreground and 
> background colours--
> or is this yet another way of making the false claim that, since IE/Win 
> can't resize text in pixels nothing else can, hence text may never be 
> sized in pixels?
> 
> Perhaps proponents of this absurd idea could give us three real-world 
> examples. You have to demonstrate that there is an actual accessibility 
> impact on people with disabilities rather than the site's simply being
> not 
> your cup of tea.
> 
> -- 
> 
>      Joe Clark | joeclark@joeclark.org
>      Accessibility <http://joeclark.org/access/>
>        --This.
>        --What's wrong with top-posting?
> 
> 
> 
>

Received on Thursday, 2 June 2005 11:21:28 UTC