- From: John M Slatin <john_slatin@austin.utexas.edu>
- Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 09:13:28 -0600
- To: "John M Slatin" <john_slatin@austin.utexas.edu>, "Alistair Garrison" <alistair.garrison@accessinmind.com>, <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
- Message-ID: <6EED8F7006A883459D4818686BCE3B3B7ADDCE@MAIL01.austin.utexas.edu>
An addendum to my intial response to Alistair's suggestion that we consider scrapping the General Techniques as a standalone document and integrating the content of general techniques into each of the technology-specific techniques documents: We might consider standing the suggestion on its head. In other words, the technology-specific documents would go away as standalone document, and instead the technology-specific techniques would be integrated into the general. I don't mean that the user would then see *all* techniques for *all* possible technologies-- that way madness lies. But the filtering mechanism that Ben and Alistair and David, etc., have been working on for the Checklists (the one Ben discussed at yesterday's call) could also be used to generate a Techniques document customized to the current needs of the current user. That is, the user would start by indicating what s/he was trying to do, on what scale (individual page, entire site, etc.), using what technologies (XHTML, Javascript, MathML, CSS for example). Once the user pushed the View My Techniques button, a view containing the relevant techniques, both general and technology-specific, would be delivered. This *could* conceivably work. Unlike the General Techniques as it stands now, the technology-specific Techniques documents are already written as collections of individual techniques-- they're atomistic already, and each technique is written without reference to the others (even though they're gathered under larger headings like Links or Navigation Support, etc., etc. Wendy has been working on a prototype that might lend itself to this. It's not quite ready for viewing yet, but soon will be, I think. John "Good design is accessible design." John Slatin, Ph.D. Director, Accessibility Institute University of Texas at Austin FAC 248C 1 University Station G9600 Austin, TX 78712 ph 512-495-4288, f 512-495-4524 email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu web http://www.utexas.edu/research/accessibility/ <http://www.utexas.edu/research/accessibility/> -----Original Message----- From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of John M Slatin Sent: Friday, February 11, 2005 8:59 am To: Alistair Garrison; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org Subject: RE: General Techniques... Alistair wrote: <blockquote> To my mind, I still believe it might be far less confusing to the reader if the guidance provided through the General techniques document was written directly into each technology specific techniques document (i.e. HTML, CSS, etc...) as specific techniques, examples and tests - removing, the need for the General Techniques document entirely. This might also help to straighten them out, getting the techniques where they belong. </blockquote> I wonder if we could accomplish something along the lines of what Alistair proposes by pulling material from the general techs source xml into the technology-specific techniques documents on the fly. In other words, there could be multiple views: a user could opt to read the General Techniques as if it were a document in its own right, more or less as it's being constructed now (though with clearer structures, mgreater consistency than is currently present, etc., etc.-- all the things we've been starting to talk through). Another user (or the same user on a different afternoon<grin>) could choose to go directly to the HTML or SVG document, and could then see both the general techniques and the technology-specific content. It seems to me that we might run into difficulty with this approach in some contexts. For example, I'm not sure how well this approach would work for CSS and scripting techniques, because the assumption is that both of those technologies are always used together with other technologies, whether XHTML or something else. Another difficulty would be that each general technique would have to make sense both as a standalone text *and* in multiple contexts. (Sort of like what we require for link text and section titles-- they have to work "when read by themselves or as a group" <grin>). That kind of writing can be demanding at sentence- or phrase-level (as in link text and section titles). It's extraordinarily difficult for longer materials, especially when they would have to work in so many different contexts. The closest model I can think of is Marvin Minsky's book _Society of Mind_ (1986), which consists of a number of separate essays, each contained on a single (oversized) page, that can be read as a linear sequence or as a set of possible combinations. It's a theoreticaldescription *and* a performative demonstration of the connectionist model of mind. It's brilliant, and took him years to write. The essays work in these multiple permutations because they're all written by Minsky, who thus has control over all the connective tissue. This is not to say that we shouldn't try for it, but it's not a straightforward thing as far as I can tell. John"Good design is accessible design." John Slatin, Ph.D. Director, Accessibility Institute University of Texas at Austin FAC 248C 1 University Station G9600 Austin, TX 78712 ph 512-495-4288, f 512-495-4524 email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu web http://www.utexas.edu/research/accessibility/ <http://www.utexas.edu/research/accessibility/> -----Original Message----- From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Alistair Garrison Sent: Friday, February 11, 2005 3:47 am To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org Subject: RE: General Techniques... Dear All, I agree... To my mind, I still believe it might be far less confusing to the reader if the guidance provided through the General techniques document was written directly into each technology specific techniques document (i.e. HTML, CSS, etc...) as specific techniques, examples and tests - removing, the need for the General Techniques document entirely. This might also help to straighten them out, getting the techniques where they belong. Alistair ________________________________ From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Gregg Vanderheiden Sent: 10 February 2005 18:20 To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org Subject: RE: General Techniques... This is a problem. And we do need to straighten them out. Also we could have a link that would patch the general on the specific. But they are organized differently and I don't think we can shuffle them together. And I don't think we should maintain them already shuffled or the text will vary from one to another over time. We are working on getting the techniques where they belong. They currently are mixed up. Gregg -- ------------------------------ Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D. Professor - Ind. Engr. & BioMed Engr. Director - Trace R & D Center University of Wisconsin-Madison ________________________________ From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Alistair Garrison Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2005 10:24 AM To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org Subject: General Techniques... Dear All, Over the past weeks I have been undertaking an end-to-end analysis of the WCAG 2.0 Guidelines and Techniques (as far as reasonably possible). The issue I come across most is the fact Technology Specific techniques and General techniques don't seem to line up - leaving me confused about what I need to do for conformance to WCAG 2.0. You can find technology specific techniques which go too far and specify things which should be left to the General techniques i.e. specified values for alt text; or General techniques which are over-extended to talk about technology specific things i.e. captions, mathematical expressions, video. Again, I state that this is causing me a great deal of confusion, and I'm sure others are finding (or will find) the same thing. To my mind, it might be far less confusing to the reader if the guidance provided through the General techniques document was written directly into each technology specific techniques document (i.e. HTML, CSS, etc...) as specific techniques, examples and tests - removing, the need for the General Techniques document entirely. I would be very interested to hear the thoughts and comments of others on this matter. Alistair Alistair Garrison Managing Director Accessinmind Limited UK Filial Tel.: 0046 8 44 65 287 Website: http://www.accessinmind.com IMPORTANT: This e-mail, including any attachments, is for the addressee only. It may contain privileged and/or confidential information. If it has come to you in error, please notify the sender immediately. If you are not the intended recipient you must not use, disclose, copy, print, distribute or rely on its contents. All e-mails and any attachments are believed, but not warranted, to be virus free. However, all e-mails should be virus checked before being downloaded and we accept no responsibility therefore.
Received on Friday, 11 February 2005 15:13:30 UTC