Re: AGENDA: W3C WAI User Agent Telecon 19 April 2000

At 10:21 AM 2000-04-18 -0500, Jon Gunderson wrote:
>WAI UA Telecon for April 19th, 2000
>
>    2.Issue #PR207: Interpretation checkpoint 2.1
>      http://cmos-eng.rehab.uiuc.edu/ua-issues/issues-linear.html#207
>
>      Notes:
>
>           A. Consensus on access to all human readible content through the 
>user interface
>
>           B. Consensus on access to all alternative equivalents through 
>the user interface
>
>           C. Currently the group has identified the primary use for access 
>to machine readible
>           content through the user interface is for repair purposes. The 
>following items
>           summarize the chairs view of the issue:
>              C.1 We have previously removed other repair related 
>checkpoints (linearization
>                of tables, etc..). The only one left is Checkpoint 2.3.
>              C.2 Examples sited affect people with disabilities the same 
>as people without
>                disabilities. Markup that does not conform to WCAG.
>              C.3 Examples sited require an expert knowledge of markup for 
>repair (small
>                number of people with skill and motivation)
>              C.4 Examples sited do not guarantee access to content only 
>potential
>              C.5 This would be a new requirement and may require stepping 
>back to a
>                previous stage in the recommendation process

The problem with this analysis is simply this:  The formats don't give you
a machine-implemetable way to separate case A from case C.  The only way
the user agent can give access to all human-comprehensible information is
to give structured (not all at once) access to the text values of all
attributes.  It's easier to do that than to try to filter on attribute.

I realize that my view is colored by working most intensively with the
talking book and supercomputing applications, but basic tree walking and
property inspection is one small body of code for all nodes in the DOM
tree.  It takes more code to restrict it than to do it all.

In order to minimize the burden on the User Agent, we need to lose the
distinction between A and C which is not supported in the formats.

Al

Received on Wednesday, 19 April 2000 14:17:43 UTC