- From: Kitch Barnicle <kitch@afb.org>
- Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 13:50:51 -0500
- To: w3c-wai-ua@w3.org
Thanks to Mark, Charles and David for their comments regarding checkpoint 4.1.2, accessible documentation. I'd like to add some comments. This morning I conferred with four of my colleagues who use screen readers and who also answer many technology related questions posed by other, less experienced, assistive technology users. Of course I got four different responses, but I am able to look at the problem in a slightly different light. 1. My colleagues and I agree that there are other checkpoints that should be given a "higher priority" than accessible documentation, at least in terms of order of implementation. That is, if we had to choose between full keyboard navigation and accessible documentation, we'd pick keyboard navigation. 2. However, I don't think we should use the argument that implementing features, in general, is more important than providing accessible documentation. There are specific features that are more important than documentation, but looking over the list of priority 1's, I would rank accessible documentation above some of them. In fact, I would be interested in having people rank order all of the priority 1s. I wonder which would rise to the top of the list when we compared rankings. 3. If the other priority 1 items in this document are implemented, the user will have a great deal of flexibility in terms of configuring the application to best suit his or her needs. And as David pointed out, for individuals without access to assistance, access to documentation might be the only recourse. As a point of illustration, I asked 13 screen reader users to turn off images in Netscape 4.05 (as part of a research study). For a number of reasons, no one succeeded in turning off images. And the four users who ventured into the help system to figure out how to turn off images were totally stymied by Netscape's inaccessible help system. So we have to be careful about building in configuration capability and then hiding it some place where users can't find it. Ideally, the user interface would be so accessible and usable that documentation is not even needed, but if we are going to expect users to configure the user agent then the documentation must be accessible. 4. In terms of documentation format, I don't think it is unreasonable to expect the user to use the browser to learn about the browser. At least in terms of desktop graphical browsers, if the user agent follows certain platform conventions (e.g. menus) and the help system is accessible, the built in help should guide the user. Is sum, I would vote for making 4.1.2 a priority 1. I think we could safely argue that some users will not be able to independently configure the user agent to be accessible without access to the documentation. Just my 2 cents, Kitch
Received on Friday, 26 February 1999 13:52:39 UTC