Re: role of DOM vs. SPEAKROW

Perhaps this problem could be clarified by considering the question of
whose responsibility it will be to implement the audio component of CSS 2.
I would submit that most of this work will ultimately fall to access
software developers rather than browser vendors, since it is the access
agent that is responsible for regulating the speech output. Thus, all that
we need ask of browser developers is that DOM should expose (1) the full
markup of the table, including the relationships established by the
HEADERS and SCOPE attributes in HTML 4.0; and (2) the CSS 2 properties
(such as SPEAKCELL and SPEAKROW) which are associated, as macros, with
table rows. DOM would be the means by which this information is
communicated to external software, and it would be the function of the
access agent (which is an audio formatter in T.V. Raman's sense of the
term) to produce the required audio rendering.

Based on the negotiations in the CSS 2 meeting, do you think that it would
be reasonable to expect macro capabilities to be implemented as far as the
DOM stage, which is all that would seem to be required, according to the
analysis carred out above?

Received on Monday, 17 November 1997 17:19:27 UTC