RE: Minutes

Agree - I don't believe the group actually decided it was too vague.

However, it became clear to me that by trying to apply the technique to the
HTML document area, 3.1.1 became too vague.  3.1.1 was in a section talking
about the the browser user interface (menus and toolbars) rather than the
HTML document area.  While you may want to lump it all together as part of
the user interface, these are two distinctly different beasts and it was my
understanding that the reason this group formed was to help solve problems
in the HTML document area and that the browser UI/setup/documentation got
lumped into peripheral items/techniques (like 3.1.1).

-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Jacobs [mailto:ij@w3.org]
Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 1998 10:20 PM
To: Charles McCathieNevile
Cc: WAI UA group
Subject: Re: Minutes


Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
> 
> The summary conclusion in the minutes includes the statement that 3.1.1 is
> too vague to be a technique.
> 
> I do not recall this ever being decided by the group.

I very much agree with Charles here. 

 - Ian

> I think that at one
> point it may have been suggested that this was the case by an individual,
> and it was suggested to me in private converstaion by an individual.
 
> I do not regard the technique (following the proposed modification which
> changes the requirement from redundant meansof control to
> device-independent means of control) as even slightly vague. It can be
> checked explicitly by the following test:
> 
> For each function provided by the User Agent (changing font, activating a
> link, selecting text, changing rate of speech, decreasing tolerance of
> key-bounce, determining how often headers are repeated in linearised
> tables, etc, as applicable to the User Agent in Question) is it possible
> for the control to be activated in a device independent manner? If there
> is an API, or a control feature for which the OS always provides
> alternative access, the answer is yes. If there is a hardware-specific
> mechanism, for which there is no API, the answer is no.
> 
> It is a wide-reaching guideline, which is very important to ensure
> accessibility of a User Agent. It probably should be modified to take
> account of whether the User Agent makes an API available or whether it is
> constrained to certain hardware. But then, a touch screen information
> kiosk, with no voice output or tactile feedback, is not accessible. Which
> is not the same thing as saying that it cannot serve a need, merely that
> in nearly all circumstances it is not a total solution to that need.
> 
> --Charles McCathieNevile -  mailto:charles@w3.org
> phone:(temporary) +1 (617) 258 8143  http://purl.oclc.org/net/charles
> 
> W3C Web Accessibility Initiative -  http://www.w3.org/WAI
> 545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, USA

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

Received on Wednesday, 16 December 1998 11:57:54 UTC