RE: Accessibility and GIS info (was: and developer contracts)

At 10:34 AM 2003-04-24, Tom James wrote:

>In principal this will be WCAG A, and it will be stated in the contract.
>However, I need to think a bit more about this. Much of the content is
>likely to be map based. I can't think how  to write a text equivalent for a
>map (referenced via longdesc or otherwise), since different users will look
>at a map and extract different content from it, and hence by definition, one
>user's "text equivalent" of a map won't be the same as another's.

I am hoping that the information is actually GIS-based, rather than
truly map-based.  The latter would be topgraphical maps, which display
the shape of the terrain.

You are correct that there is no standard reference that you can just apply
by title on access to geographic information.  On the other hand, if you
review MapQuest and its competitors, you will see that the current standard
for consumer GIS Web applications offers text-dialog query interfaces that
cover most of the functionality afforded through interaction with the map
displays.

But see if you can get a demonstration of CitySpeak as developed by the ATRC
at the University of Toronto.

One of the functions you may wish to implement is a pedestrian way-finding 
(route
planning) system.

The City of Rockville, MD has implemented such a system for the use of 
their city
planning decisions; but they don't have it on the Web at present.

  http://listserv.gsa.gov/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0304&L=cioc-web-services&F=&S=&P=6701

The King County, WA transit site is supposed to be pretty good.

http://transit.metrokc.gov/

For some over-the-top GIS tricks (I am not saying how accessible they are 
or aren't,
but to whet your appetite)  consider

http://www.sangis.org/

Best of luck with the new site.

Al

>The devil, as always, is in the detail!
>
>         Tom
>
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Received on Thursday, 24 April 2003 13:06:06 UTC