UA Guidelines Questions/Comments

Hello,

I have some additional comments with respect to the 14 August draft [0].
[0] http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/WD-WAI-USERAGENT-19980814.html

Section 4.2: Alternative Representations
- Currently, there is a phrase in section 3.4 that should not
  be there: "When not supplied by the author, the user agent should
  generate alternate text." That sentence was put in 3.4 (an
  introductory paragraph) as a pre-cursor to later guidelines, but
  it sounds too much like a guideline where it is. Furthermore, 
  there is not guideline that states this. Therefore, I propose
  a guideline in section 4.2 that reads 
  "If the user has not specified alternative text,
  the user agent must provide it." This should be a priority 1.

- Guideline 4.2.1 
  "Allow the user to specify how and where to render alternate
   representations of information."

   People seem concerned that this guideline is too vague and
   may require too much of user agents. I propose we discuss
   and refine it.

- Guideline 4.2.2
  "Allow users to turn on/off the display of d-links in a document."

   Has there been resolution on the identification of d-links? If
   not, what should be done about this guideline?

Section 4.4: Alternate Representations of Audio, etc.
- Guideline 4.4.2: "Allow the user to turn on/off closed captioning
     of audio, vido, movies, and animations." There is a statement about
     support at the level of the operating system. I propose that this
     be moved to a section on OS-level support and a link to that
     section be left in its place.  

Section 6.1 Sequential Navigation within a view
- Guideline 6.1.1 "Allow the user to use keyboard commands to
   move sequentially from one link, element with "longdesc",
   or form control to the next in the same view." What does
   "next" mean? Is that document order? Tabbing order?

Section 7.2 Menu Commands
- Guideline 7.2.1 "Display keyboard navigation shortcut commands
     in customizable menus." What does "customizable" mean? There
     is no explanation.

- I propose that we clearly identify that which should be
  done at the level of the operating system and that
  which should be done by the browser. I have seen several
  questions that straddle this fence, including:

        - Keyboard access [1]
        - System level flags related to closed captioning [2]

  I think a section on what should be done at the OS level
  (whether simply informative or more than that) might help.

 [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/1998JulSep/0057.html
 [2] http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/WD-WAI-USERAGENT-19980814.html#Alt-movies

Thanks,

 - Ian

-- 
Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org) 
Tel/Fax: (212) 684-1814 
http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs

Received on Wednesday, 19 August 1998 16:32:35 UTC