- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 11:14:39 -0400 (EDT)
- To: Jonathan Chetwynd <j.chetwynd@btinternet.com>
- cc: <djw@bts.co.uk>, <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Hmm, I wish I had a better answer to this, because Jonathan is right that without a good tool people will be hard-pushed to make good content, except for a few experts. I believe that the top-of-the-line Adobe tools have good support, but I don't know - I can't afford them either. I use Amaya, which is starting to have good support, but I still have to do a fair bit of tweaking based on reading the layout information, and it doesn't provide support for authoring animations yet. More information on tools is available from the SVG home page http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG but in terms of accessible user interface and a free tool I think there is a way to go yet. (I did have a promising discussion with the developers of a tool called WebSound, which is primarily designed as an accessible browser. They are working on another tool designed to make images more accessible at low cost, and it seemed that SVG might be the ost promising format to be using for authoring/storage, so there is hope on the horizon at least) cheers Charles McCN On Wed, 4 Jul 2001, Jonathan Chetwynd wrote: There has been a fairly concerted effort to encourage me as well as others to use SVG. I would like to make it clear that my LDD students are intimately involved in authoring the symbols we use. They must be capable of using 'suitable' drawing tools to so author. Paint, Painter Classic and Photoshop (for the more able) are all fine, they can use a graphics pen and tablet, or a mouse. The GIMP is of course amazing. They may be used freehand and require no programming skills. They do not require one to use or understand difficult or obscure algorithms, such as circles, ovals etc. Paint, and Painter Classic come with the kit, and are thus effectively 'free'. We don't have Photoshop, though i have linked to a site where LDD students do... Jpeg, bmps and gifs can be imported into any of these tools, played with, saved and printed in any other format. Can you please recommend a suitable (free) SVG authoring tool, because until there is such a tool, we are very unlikely to find SVG accessible. btw I have linux they do not, and may not for about 3 years or possibly more, though I do plan to provide a linux notebook soon.... It really does need to be as good as them jonathan chetwynd IT teacher (LDD) j.chetwynd@btinternet.com http://www.peepo.com "The first and still the best picture directory on the web" -- Charles McCathieNevile http://www.w3.org/People/Charles phone: +61 409 134 136 W3C Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI fax: +1 617 258 5999 Location: 21 Mitchell street FOOTSCRAY Vic 3011, Australia (or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France)
Received on Thursday, 5 July 2001 11:14:42 UTC