Re: Questions about WCAG 1.3

The scenario under consideration when this checkpoint was drafted was that
the textual equivalent, comprising a description of the visual track,
would be written as a document in a markup language such as HTML or XML.
Smil would then be used to synchronise a synthetic speech rendering of
this text with the playing of the visual track. Obviously, the checkpoint
is expressed in general terms that are not limited to Smil, though it was
certainly the format which members of the Web Content Guidelines working
group had in mind in proposing to qualify the checkpoint. It should be
noted that the guidelines require textual equivalents of visual
information to be provided in any case, and if an automatically generated
spoken rendering can be synchronised with the visual track, this relieves
the author from having to provide both (1) a textual equivalent of the
visual track, and (2) and auditory description of the same content.

Received on Tuesday, 30 November 1999 17:20:40 UTC