Scott revisited (was 3issues)

JC:: "We need to formalise this somehow within the guidelines and also
ensure that the WAI homepage meets the need of a variety of users not
only the techies."

WL: I believe our paraphrase is that rather than "the" homepage being a
certain "way" the semantic content of all of the Web must be posted in
such a form that it may "meet the need..." of *everyone*. If the
content, structure, and presentation are maintained (this requires the
specific demands the Web standards make on the authoring tool and the
latter's teasing out these three factors from the author during site
creation), everyone will be connectable with everything. Making the
presentation of the content, when it is necessary that it be different
from the authors' picturalizations/audiolizations/realisations is much
like any form of translation - simple but not easy. The translator must
be able to understand what the author *means* not just what she *says*
or how she says it. To this end all the elements of discourse ("'tain't
whacha do, it's the way howja do it") must be available in the forms we
seek to have present in the marked up document. As WCAG and ATAG working
groups we must not move from the doughnut of
content/structure/presentation to the hole of "Final Object". Of course
certain conventions of illustration and identification and elucidation
are necessary for different users but *what is it that must be
illustrated, identified or elucidated*? is the question the Authoring
Tool must put to the author.
  
	*what do you mean by (:<)> (oh, it's Sir Walter Raleigh sideways)
	*does that there .gif mean "rose" or "spring"?
	*is that a link to "further resources" or foobar.txt?

The job of explaining what "cuantos anos tienes" means to a Mexican
child requires certain markups that are naggingly demanded by an
adequate authoring tool, but the published marked-up site must be
presented to different users in a plentitude of guises not just some
"final form" pictogram of the (too often retinally conceited) author's
insistence on how it "looks" rather than what it's supposed to say.

When we make up our examples showing how the WAI homepage (or whatever)
can be presented for different audiences the emphasis is going to be on
how we can ferret out what to present - the *how* is for specialists in
Jonathan's position. Only a deafspeak mediator can translate all those
obscure audiophones into proper ASL, only a...

Content, structure, presentation. In this case "separate but equal" is
not a hated pejorative but a necessity.

-- 
Love.
            ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE
http://dicomp.pair.com

Received on Wednesday, 19 April 2000 11:53:56 UTC