might be last option for plain language

Hiwe have at working draft semantics for personlization like coga-action and coga-easylang that would alow people to conform to the plain language proposal via personlization ( see https://w3c.github.io/personalization-semantics )


I understood from this group that they do not want to rely on this for conformance, however with the plain language sc as written you can either change the text or use the personlization semantics.  In other words the free speach is not an issue


Does this seem to be a way forward? 


All the best

Lisa Seeman

LinkedIn, Twitter





---- On Tue, 16 May 2017 16:24:01 +0300 John Foliot<john.foliot@deque.com> wrote ---- 

Summary:

  +1 support for the tightened scope
  -1 for "word lists" (Common Words)
  -1 for "easy-to-set user setting."


Details follow.


**********


Hi Lisa, COGA TF members,


I strongly agree with the tightened scope to error messages, instructions, labels and navigational elements, although like others I think we need to tighten / supply a definition for "navigational elements", as in the abstract *any* link can be used for "navigation". 


Do you actually mean content used in a 'menu'? In other words, instead of "navigational elements" perhaps "navigational menus" or "navigational menu items" (with a note in the Understanding prose that states that in HTML, menu is defined as content contained within either the <nav> element, or a container with role="navigation" applied)?  I suspect however that this is a minor and trivial point.


At the risk of this feeling like another pile-on however...


Common Words


> Provide words or phrases from a public core vocabulary

Provide how? Where? ​I​
n any specific format?​ For what purpose? 
A "word list" minus definitions is simply a list of 1500 words...​​ 



As Gregg notes, myself and others have questioned the mechanics of this in a practical sense, and we're simply not at a point technologically t​o make this useful. For example the Draft, and your explanation further states:


​> Also using the coga-simplelang  attribute will allow people to keep uncommon words and allow AT to replace them.


While I share the enthusiasm of the work happening around the Proposal: COGA Semantics to Enable Personalization, we must accept today that this is still but a proposal, and not yet at the point where it is a stable, implementable W3C technology. Referencing it as a potential solution is optimistic, and additionally I think that is more appropriate in the Techniques section, but until such time as we have (two independent) robust implementations of the proposal, it remains simply an interesting and useful work in progress.


> Non-literal language is not used, or can be automatically replaced, via an easy-to-set user setting. 

Which​ easy-to-set setting are you referring to?​ I am unaware of this feature in any commercial browser today, and while I think we all want browsers to do a better job in personalization and granular user-settings, the reality is that this is and will remain a user-agent requirement, and not an authoring requirement (unless the intent here is to force authors to create that easy-to-set setting, which I suspect will receive a TON of push-back).



​This is not to say​ that we should ignore the need for Non-literal language (especially in the context of the tightened scope), but I think we need to drop the exception for now as unworkable and unsupported. 


I think we can safely say that (for) error messages, instructions, labels and navigational (menu) elements, (they) must not use non-literal language. (Period. And ensure that a definition exists for non-literal language.) 


While testing for this requirement will still require some subjective determination (at the same level of determining whether an 'alt text' is appropriate or not), I will suggest that I think that would be an acceptable 'middle-ground' response, especially if/when we provide a good definition and examples of non-literal versus literal language. (i.e. saying that "it is raining cats and dogs" does not mean that animals are falling from the sky...) 


JF



















On Mon, May 15, 2017 at 3:51 PM, White, Jason J <jjwhite@ets.org> wrote:
   I agree with Gregg. Much as I wish it were otherwise, the sensitivity of this formulation to context is both necessary and disastrous to the testability of the proposal. 
      
 From: Gregg C Vanderheiden [mailto:greggvan@umd.edu] 
 Sent: Monday, May 15, 2017 4:45 PM
 To: lisa.seeman <lisa.seeman@zoho.com>
 Cc: w3c-waI-gl@w3. org <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
 Subject: Re: changes to plain language based on the feedback
 
 
  
  
   
 
  
    On May 15, 2017, at 2:47 PM, lisa.seeman <lisa.seeman@zoho.com> wrote:
 
  
  Common words
 Provide words or phrases from a public core vocabulary; or the most common 1500 words or phrases (including word roots); or word, phrases or abbreviations that are the most-common form to refer to the concept in a public word frequency list for the identified context. 
 
  
  
   
 
  I do not think that this is possible.  I have spent year looking at this first in the 1990s and again in 2000’s.   I love the idea but see no way to do it.     It just isnt feasible.  
 
   
 
  There have been a number of other posting saying the same. 
 
   
 
  I have seen no answer to any of these postings that leads me to believe that there was any answer to the questions and problems raised. 
 
   
 
  Until there is — not matter how nice this would be — we cannot have a provision that is based on wishes and not reality. 
 
   
 
  Sorry to be blunt — but unless you can show that most any site provided to you can be reworded by an average web author into one that can meet this — we cannot have such a provision at any level other than AAA. 
 
   
 
  I know that this does not apply to the whole site - but only to 
 
   
 
    error messages that require a response to continue, 
 instructions, 
 labels and 
 navigational elements 
 
 
  But even those elements use words that are outside of any 1500 word vocabulary
 
   
 
   
 
  If we are going to put something like this forward we should be able to show how it can be done on any page 
 
 
  For a sample to start with - try rewording all of those elements on these
 
    amazon
 a banking website
 WebMD
 W3C
   
 
 
  Best
 
   
 
  Gregg
 
   
 
  PS  also need a definition of Navigation elements?   Does this include Links? 
 
 


 
 
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-- 
John Foliot


Principal Accessibility Strategist

Deque Systems Inc.

john.foliot@deque.com



Advancing the mission of digital accessibility and inclusion