Re: Preparation for 27 April teleconference [Was Re: AGENDA: W3C WAI User Agent Telecon 27 April 2000]

The piece that is missing is easy access to marked-up semantics. For example,
the fact that something has been marked as an address, or a chapter title, or
a summary or abstract. There may be no equivalence, there is just information
that can be used.

All data is data, but some data as expressed is intended to be meaningful to
the reader (the role of an element, the content of an alternative, etc) and
some is intended to be processable by a machine (the URI from which an
equivalent can be fetched, the RDF property that signifies a role according
to a machine-interpreted scheme, etc.)

cheers

Charles McCN

On Wed, 26 Apr 2000, Ian Jacobs wrote:

  Al Gilman wrote:
  > 
  > At 10:18 PM 2000-04-25 -0400, Ian Jacobs wrote:
  > >   Proposal:
  > >
  > >   1) Leave 2.1 checkpoint text the same.
  > >      ("Make available all content, including equivalent
  > >        alternatives for content.")
  > >   2) Require that for content known by specification to
  > >      be for users (including information in style sheets),
  > >      that a document source view does not suffice.
  > 
  [snip]
  > "What is for display" is view-specific.  Not document-information-generic.
  > 
  > "What is for the user" is not a valid concept in the Universal Access
  > architecture.  It is a residue of "view chauvenism;" someone's assumption
  > as to what view the user is using.  All the properties are informative, and
  > may be exposed in the over-the-wire encoding as text or (where available)
  > in a friendlier transform of that encoding.
  
  Similarly, in another email [1] you write:
  
     "There is no fundamental semantic difference between what is
      called data vs. metadata.  They both play the same role as 
      bearers of information  Semantically, it is all just
      one class of data.  This is a little-understood fact of 
      information science."
  
  I think that we should focus on one particular view of
  the data: the author's view of what pieces of content are
  equivalent. The author marks up these pieces in a way that
  allows user agents to recognize the pieces as equivalent. I think
  the Working Group wants those equivalents to be easily 
  interchangeable or reachable in the same view. 
  
  Proposal (both P1):
  
  2.1.a Provide easy access to all equivalents.
  
   The equivalents could be rendered in the same viewport, through
   tool tips, by querying selected elements for attribute values,
   etc. A document source view would not meet this requirement since
   it would not be easy for most users. I don't think that it should
   be a requirement that all equivalents be rendered in the same
   viewport since that may not help some users, and some users may
   want more than one of the equivalents rendered at a given moment.
   Again, it's understood here that an "equivalent" is one that
   the user agent can recognize. It's also understood that this
   means "access through the UI" (which will be stated elsewhere).
  
  2.1.b Provide access to all content.
  
   A document source view would meet this requirement, though
   a structured navigation view would be better. All content
   need not be available in one view (though that's the easiest to
   do). All content need not be available in every view.
  
  Am I missing any important pieces?
  
   - Ian
  
  [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2000AprJun/0210.html
  -- 
  Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
  Tel:                         +1 831 457-2842
  Cell:                        +1 917 450-8783
  

--
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053
Postal: GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001,  Australia

Received on Thursday, 27 April 2000 00:20:52 UTC