RE: Wordle worthwhile to accessify?

This reply pushes my buttons!  Sure, it would be easy to created a list of
words ordered by frequency.  (Obviously, Wordle already does this!)  But
creating such a "text-only page" approach does nothing to advance
accessibility.  It's Wordle's popularity that we're after, not its
technology.  If Wordle offered to its users the option of creating a
longdesc, accessibility would futhered directly and indirectly (by
acquainting users of text alternatives).  Does Feinberg think this invisible
added feature would undercut Wordle somehow, or does he believe in the
cootie theory?

Sorry for the intemperance....

***
Jim Tobias
Inclusive Technologies
+1.908.907.2387 v/sms
skype jimtobias
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Peter Thiessen
> Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 4:25 PM
> To: Elizabeth J. Pyatt
> Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Wordle worthwhile to accessify?
> 
> 
> Forwarding a comment from Jonathon Feinberg on my blog (
> http://blog.overscore.com/?p=14) to you:
> 
> "Elizabeth,
> 
> The word count would be best displayed as a list in 
> decreasing order, not as a Wordle. Such a list would not give 
> the pleasure that a Wordle gives, nor would people be 
> creating lists of word frequency by the hundreds of 
> thousands. Youšre right that itšs a visualizationS which is 
> why therešs no sense in creating a non-visual representation of it.
> 
> If someone really wants such a service, it would take all of 
> 30 minutes to create in PHP!
> "
> - Jonathan Feinberg
> 
> 
> 
> > From: "Elizabeth J. Pyatt" <ejp10@psu.edu>
> > Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:40:42 -0000
> > To: Peter Thiessen <peter.thiessen@primalfusion.com>, 
> > <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
> > Subject: Re: Wordle worthwhile to accessify?
> >
> > I think Jonathan of Wordle is missing the power of his own tool.
> >
> > It's NOT just placing random words in a picture, but 
> extracting words 
> > from a text and presenting an informational visualization. It's 
> > telling the user which words are the most frequently used on a Web 
> > page or text (because bigger = more frequently used) as 
> well as a list 
> > of key words.
> >
> > For instance, I did a Wordle on an educational technology site and 
> > discovered that the top word used was "students" and that 
> "technology" 
> > was a 3rd tier word at best. I think that any user would be 
> interested 
> > in this (in fact I myself wouldn't mind seeing a cleaned up 
> text based 
> > version of this list).
> >
> > FYI - I just found an option which shows a pop-up list of 
> the words in 
> > alphabetical order and the word count.  I think this IS the 
> > alternative information. I would recommend a simple 
> non-Java link to 
> > this list (possibly even an option for sorting by 
> frequency). I think 
> > all users would be interested and would benefit.
> >
> > I think the "eye candy" part (e.g. colors, fonts, layout) may be 
> > irrelevant, but definitely not the frequency list.
> >
> > Elizabeth
> >
> >
> >> Great points, especially exposing semantics to search engines etc.
> >>
> >> I argued point 5 with Jonathan and this proved hard to 
> convince him 
> >> of. His argument was: Wordle is not about trivial 
> activities such as 
> >> counting or words but all about visually representing 
> words - its all 
> >> about the visual eye candy. He then pointed me to a few 
> text analysis tools:
> >>
> >> Perhaps these would be more along the lines you're thinking of?
> >> http://textalyser.net/
> >> http://www.textanalysis.com/
> >> http://www.textanalysis.info/
> >> http://www.usingenglish.com/resources/text-statistics.php
> >>
> >> One response might be that video on the net is all about the eye 
> >> candy. The audio is important but not nearly as important. People 
> >> still find value in adding captions that help describe the visual 
> >> content. I caught myself on this argument though, how the 
> hell would 
> >> you "caption" a Wordle and get those funky text effects 
> meaningfully described?
> >>
> >> -peter
> >>
> >
> > --
> > =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> > Elizabeth J. Pyatt, Ph.D.
> > Instructional Designer
> > Education Technology Services, TLT/ITS Penn State University 
> > ejp10@psu.edu, (814) 865-0805 or (814) 865-2030 (Main Office)
> >
> > 210 Rider Building  (formerly Rider II)
> > 227 W. Beaver Avenue
> > State College, PA   16801-4819
> > http://www.personal.psu.edu/ejp10/psu
> > http://tlt.psu.edu
> >
> 
>

Received on Wednesday, 15 October 2008 22:30:51 UTC