- From: Denis Anson <danson@miseri.edu>
- Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 08:40:12 -0400
- To: <schwer@us.ibm.com>, "Jon Gunderson" <jongund@staff.uiuc.edu>
- Cc: <w3c-wai-ua@w3.org>
Rich, This proposal would be fine were it not for the fact that people with a primary disability (such as blindness) sometimes also have a secondary disability, such as physical movement restrictions, that must also be accommodated. If a targeted user agent provides only native conformance for the issues that are considered to be pertinent to that disability (or more appropriately, functional level), then it may not support the adaptations required for the secondary disability. Primarily, there are two components of access: input and output. Most of the targeted user agents are built around adaptations of output to a different format: Braille or voice, for example. Rendering video with captioning deals with auditory output. But even those with output restrictions can have input restrictions, such that they cannot use the standard keyboard/mouse interface, and must use an alternative input method. All user agents should support external assistive technologies so that both input and output can be modified as needed. Denis Anson -----Original Message----- From: w3c-wai-ua-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ua-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of schwer@us.ibm.com Sent: Monday, August 30, 1999 4:47 PM To: Jon Gunderson Cc: w3c-wai-ua@w3.org Subject: Re: Action Item: Investigate wording for possible third class agent for conformance section Jon, After considerable thought on this on really believe section 3.1(conformance) needs to define a third class of agent called a "Targetted Agent." Targetted agents like Home Page Reader and PWWebSpeak are user agents that are targetted to a specific disabilities group or groups. They are not designed to work with or provide access to features that an unrelated asssitive technology should need. In particular, the definition of "Native support" required: "for dependend user agents states that Native support does not preclude more extensive support for accessibility by dependent user agents, so user agents must still make information available through programming interfaces." This means that if a targetted agent renders a document visually it needs to support a DOM and expose all the API to another assistive technology for the purposes of enabling access by different user agent technologies or disabilites groups not intended by the targetted agent. When doing our Home Page Reader Evaluation and when assessing future Home Page Reader product requirements we found numerous conformance checkpoints that were non-applicable for the reasons stated. To change the wording in section 3.1 I would suggest the following: The terms "must", "should", and "may" (and related terms) are used in this document in accordance with RFC 2119 ([RFC2119]). To promote interoperability between graphical desktop user agents and dependent user agents and between graphical desktop user agents and targetted agents conformance to this document is expressed in terms of these three types of software. Conformance for graphical desktop browsers In order to conform as a graphical desktop browser, the user agent must satisfy all the checkpoints (for a chosen conformance level) that apply to graphical desktop browsers and do so natively. Even for those checkpoints that must be satisfied natively, graphical desktop browsers should make information available to other software through standard interfaces (e.g., specialized dependent user agents may provide a better solution to a problem than a graphical desktop browser). Conformance for dependent user agents In order to conform as a dependent user agent, the user agent must satisfy all the checkpoints (for a chosen conformance level) that apply to dependent user agents and do so natively. Conformance for targetted agents In order to conform as a targetted agent, the user must satisfy all the checkpoints (for a chosen conformance level) that apply to targetted agents. Targetted agents are graphical desktop browsers targetted to a specific disability. The difficulty here will be deciding what checkpoints apply to what disabilties. Does such a list exist? Rich Rich Schwerdtfeger Lead Architect, IBM Special Needs Systems EMail/web: schwer@us.ibm.com http://www.austin.ibm.com/sns/rich.htm "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.", Frost
Received on Tuesday, 31 August 1999 08:36:51 UTC