Re: review of section 6

Thank you for your comments Charles,
Jon


At 08:00 PM 2/23/99 -0500, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>On Tue, 23 Feb 1999, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>
>  I have interspersed my comments between (often lengthy) chunks of the
>  document (look for CMN:). Where I don't see any problems, I have left out
>  the relevant excerpt (look for SNIP)
>  
>    6.1 Provide information about the document view
>            
>     Users that are viewing documents through linear channels of perception
>  like speech (since speech is temporal in nature) and tactile displays
>  (current tactile technology is limited in the amount of information that
>  can be displayed) have difficultly maintaining a sense of their relative
>  position in a document. The meaning of "relative position" depends on the
>  situation. It may mean the distance from the beginning of the document to
>  the point of regard (how much of the document has been read), it may mean
>  the cell currently being examined in a table, or the position of the
>  current document in a set of documents.
>  
>     For people with visual impairments, it is important that the point of
>  regard remain as stable as possible. For instance, when returning to a
>  document previously viewed, the user's previous point of regard on the
>  document should be restored. The user agent should not disturb the user's
>  point of regard by shifting focus to a different frame or window when an
>  event occurs without notifying the user of the change. Disturbing the
>  user's point of regard may cause problems for users who have movement
>  impairments, who are blind, who have visual impairments, who have certain
>  types of learning disabilities, or for any user who cannot or has chosen
>  not to view the authors representation of information.
>  
>  CMN: This paragraph (above) could be significantly trimmed without losing
>  any content.
>       
>  SNIP
>  
>     6.1.9 [Priority 2]
>            When a document is loaded or when requested by the user, make
>  available document summary information. 
>  
>  CMN: This is too vague. What information is required?
>    
>     6.1.11 [Priority 3]
>            Provide the user with information about document loading status
>  (e.g., whether loading has stalled, whether enough of the page has loaded
>  to begin navigating, whether following a link involves a fee, etc.)
>  
>  CMN: This is also very vague. Perhaps this should be combined with 6.1.9,
>  and made explicit as to what tyes of information are required.
>  
>    6.2 Provide information about document structure
>   
>     Hierarchical navigation (through the document tree) is useful for
>  efficiently navigating the major topics and sub-topics of a document.
>       
>     6.2.1 [Priority 2]
>            Allow the user to view a document outline constructed from its
>  structural elements (e.g., from header and list elements).
>  
>     6.2.2 [Priority 2]
>            Allow the user to navigate the document tree.
>     
>     6.2.3 [Priority 2]
>            Allow the user to navigate sequentially among headers.
>  
>     6.2.4 [Priority 2]
>            Allow the user to navigate sequentially among block elements
>  (e.g., paragraphs, lists and list items, etc.)
>     
>     6.2.5 [Priority 2]
>            Allow the user to search for an element in the current document
>  based on its text content. In case of a match, the selection should be
>  moved to the element.
>  
>  CMN: This section could be structured much better.
>  
>  The checkpoints are, so far as I can see, as follows:
>  
>  1. Allow the user to navigate the document's structural tree [p2]
>  
>  2. Allow the user to generate and navigate a tree based on teh semantics
>  of a DTD [p3]
>  
>  Technique: For an HTML document, construct a tree where headers are
>  considered children of preceding headers with greater priority, and
>  block-level elements are considered children of headers. Amaya does
>  something like this in its 'outline' view.
>  
>  3. Allow the user to search for content. In case of a match, move the
>  selection to the content [p2]
>  
>  4. Allow the user to search for an element, by specifying text content or
>  the content of descriptive attributes (eg TITLE, ALT). In case of a match,
>  move te selection to the element [p3]
>      
>    6.3 Provide information about events
>            
>     It is important to alert users, in an output device-independent
>  fashion, when important events occur during a browsing session. To avoid
>  confusion that the effects of scripts may cause, users should be notified
>  when scripts are executed (or be able to disable scripts entirely). This
>  is also important for security reasons; users should be able to decide
>  whether to allow scripts to execute on their machines.
>            
>     6.3.1 [Priority 1]
>            Allow the user to navigate among elements with associated
event handlers.
>  
>  CMN: Is this relevant to UAs which do not handle the events? I suspect
>  not. Should it apply to navigating the children of an element which
>  handles bubbled events? I suspect so. All Children? Harder to say.
>  
>     6.3.2 [Priority 2]
>            Alert the user when scripts or applets are executed.
>            
>     6.3.3 [Priority 3]
>            Provide information about document changes resulting from the
>  execution of a script.
>  
>  CMN: I suggest that 6.3.2 and 6.3.3 be rewritten as follows:
>  
>  1. Provide notification of content and structure changes to the Document
>  Object Model. [p1]
>  
>  2. Provide notification of style changes to the Document Object Model.
>  [p2]
>  
>  3. Provide information about content and structure changes to the Document
>  Object Model. [p2]
>  
>  4. Provide information about style changes to the Document Object Model.
>  [p3]
>  
>  Charles McCN
>  --Charles McCathieNevile            mailto:charles@w3.org
>  phone: +1 617 258 0992   http://purl.oclc.org/net/charles
>  W3C Web Accessibility Initiative    http://www.w3.org/WAI
>  MIT/LCS  -  545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139,  USA
>  
>  
>
>--Charles McCathieNevile            mailto:charles@w3.org
>phone: +1 617 258 0992   http://purl.oclc.org/net/charles
>W3C Web Accessibility Initiative    http://www.w3.org/WAI
>MIT/LCS  -  545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139,  USA
> 
Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., ATP
Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology
Division of Rehabilitation - Education Services
University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
1207 S. Oak Street
Champaign, IL 61820

Voice: 217-244-5870
Fax: 217-333-0248
E-mail: jongund@uiuc.edu
WWW:	http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~jongund
	http://www.als.uiuc.edu/InfoTechAccess

Received on Wednesday, 24 February 1999 09:32:40 UTC