- From: Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>
- Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 16:16:38 -0400
- To: claws@us.ibm.com
- CC: Jon Gunderson <jongund@staff.uiuc.edu>, thatch@us.ibm.com, pjenkins@us.ibm.com, schwer@us.ibm.com, w3c-wai-ua@w3.org
claws@us.ibm.com wrote: > > Jon and Ian, > > I was going to post this note on the UA listserv, but I wasn't sure if the > attachments would work or if you liked attachments on the listserv. Feel free to > redistribute this information. I'm sending this reply to the UAGL list. > Over the past year and a half, IBM Special Needs has evaluated Home Page Reader > several times against different drafts of the UA Guidelines to identify user > requirements for new releases of HPR and to assess our conformance to the > guidelines. We have also assessed other user agents and assistive technology > against the guidelines as part of our competitve analysis. Each time we have > found that the guidelines were subject to interpretation. That is, I believe, inevitable. The challenge for the Working Group is to convey a requirement that is precise enough to be understood and verifiable, but flexible enough to allow developer interpretation and alternative techniques that still allow one to satisfy the requirement. > As we evaluated each > guideline against the HPR product and other user agents, we asked ourselves the > following questions: These and other questions might be the basis of a FAQ for the UA GL when they approach Recommendation. > 1. What are some techniques and solutions that could be implemented to comply > with each guideline? What are the best techniques? (We know the techniques > document is attempting to address this question.) Right, and we should rank them, even if we don't use a formal system for doing so. > 2. Do the techniques implemented in HPR and other user agents comply 100% with a > guideline or are the implementations only sufficient or simply inadequate? Today, our only options for conformance to a checkpoint are "yes", "no", "n/a". I don't know whether we need more levels: "yes, significantly"; "yes, a little", etc. I think that we cannot eliminate all subjectivity. In the end, people should be able to say "Yes, but not very much" and still count that as a Yes. However, if there are checkpoints where you feel that conformance is easy but no accessibility issues are addressed, please let us know. > 3. If HPR/other UAs do not comply with the guideline at all, is the guideline > important as a user requirement for the target market? Testing, review, and experience with the guidelines will show what is important, superfluous, under-specified, and misunderstood. In part, these reviews are bringing weaknesses and unclear points to light and thus are invaluable before we go to Recommendation. > 4. If you use HPR/other UAs with other mainstream browsers and assistive > technology, does the total browser solution comply with the guideline? No. The goal of the current conformance statement was to allow a piece of software to conform without depending on another piece of software. Which checkpoints do you think suggest that software in tandem might conform but not individually? > We are in the process of doing a conformance assessment for HPR 2.5 against the > August 9, 1999, draft of the UA guidelines, and we will send that to you in a > week or two. We hope that these evaluations provide some insight into how > developers are and will be able to use the UA guidelines. Thanks. Already received [1]. I have not reviewed the report yet, but I'll respond to it on the list. Thank you Cathy, - Ian [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/1999JulSep/0234.html -- Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org) http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs Tel/Fax: +1 212 684-1814
Received on Friday, 27 August 1999 16:17:09 UTC