RE: Seamless Accessibility (was Re: your mail)

It is kind'a on the order of translating from one language to another.  I
think that I like Liam's perspective.  The others have excellent merit, but,
likely as an alternative form (aka Longdesc).  Would you copy definitions of
each word from a dictionary to translate to another language?  Why should it
be different for translating between environments?  Yes, you lose objects.
But, you do not alter the meaning of the information within the objects in
that document.  It is translation of the meaning versus direct translation
of the objects.

For instance:
Take this simple Spanish idiom: "Media Naranja"

Translated to English:
Literally it means "Half Orange."
In practice it means "Better Half" or "Wife."

It doesn't make sense that a man would be calling his wife half fruity ;)

How about this?
Is it a "bright red octagon with reflective white letters spelling S T O P."
or a "stop sign"?

I don't think that the average user wants or needs to be forced to read a
schematic description of the image if they are in a text or speech
environment.  They certainly should have access to one via an alternative
method.  They just want/need to know what the image is in plain, simple
terms.  I know many 'sighted' users that use text-only to escape massive
images.  Now you want to give them massive and complex descriptions with the
massive images?

Look at it from another perspective for a moment.  You seem to be missing
the forest for all of the trees.

,David Norris

World Wide Web - http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/1652/
Illusionary Web - http://illusionary.dyn.ml.org/ <-- 02:00 - 10:00 GMT
Video/Audio Phone - callto:illusionary.dyn.ml.org
Page via mail - 412039@pager.mirabilis.com
ICQ Universal Internet Number - 412039
E-Mail - kg9ae@geocities.com

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org]On
Behalf Of Liam Quinn
Sent: Friday, May 22, 1998 10:57 PM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: RE: Seamless Accessibility (was Re: your mail)

Received on Saturday, 23 May 1998 02:30:53 UTC