- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 14:58:53 -0400 (EDT)
- To: Ann Navarro <ann@webgeek.com>
- cc: Kynn Bartlett <kynn-hwg@idyllmtn.com>, w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
I think you have summarised this thread very neatly. It seems to me that Web Content Accesibility Guidelines version 1.0 is not being read in a way that makes the requirement for comprehensibility clear. The first aork item from this thread, then, is to see whether the best approach is to work on updating the guidelines, or on better education, or on some other approach. I have raised this issue in the working group, and it is being actively considered. (Web accessibility is about access to the content of the web, regardless of disability. Blind people could use a graphics tool such as xv to determine what colour each pixel of each image was. This meets the requirement for ability to find out what the content is, without meeting any rquirement for comprehensibility. For people whose disability affects their ability to read vast slabs of text, there are approaches which can be used to solve their problems of access too.) Charles McCN On Fri, 11 Jun 1999, Ann Navarro wrote: At 11:23 AM 6/11/99 -0400, Charles McCathieNevile wrote: > that I think it is precisely when you understand the >symbolism of Picasso that it is accessible. And the deeper an understanding >you have, the more accessible it is. >Accessibility is about understanding. But we're talking about Web accessibility. If accessibility is about understanding, the WAI guidelines need some serious additional work, because they provide access to content, not a guarantee (nor even the mechanism) that anyone can understand that content. Ann --- Author of Effective Web Design: Master the Essentials Buy it Online - http://www.webgeek.com/about.html Coming this summer! --- Mastering XML Founder, WebGeek Communications http://www.webgeek.com Vice President-Finance, HTML Writers Guild http://www.hwg.org Director, HWG Online Education http://www.hwg.org/classes --Charles McCathieNevile mailto:charles@w3.org phone: +1 617 258 0992 http://www.w3.org/People/Charles W3C Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI MIT/LCS - 545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139, USA
Received on Sunday, 13 June 1999 14:59:03 UTC