Comments: User Agent Responsibilities

Ian,

Here are the comments I promised:

General comment:

Somewhere in the beginning of the document define the DOM abbreviation so
that it does not have to be written out so much.

Introduction:

second paragraph: Change They might even to they are more likely to

third paragraph: Append this sentence to the end: Another is that Assistive
Technologies do not support these functionalities as it is more appropriate
that they reside in the User Agent.

What is a User Agent?

fourth bullet in first bulleted list: Change Interfaces to Public
Interfaces

Add these to first bulleted list:

- Java Virtual Machine to support Java Applets
- Facilities for Loading Assistive Technologies

What is an Assistive Technology?

In first paragraph change target audience to disabled user.

The bulleted list here is inconsistent with the preceding paragraph. You
refer to additional services you might include and these should represent
assistive technology services and not user agent services since these are
provided in the previous section. These rewordings correct the first for
bulleted list inconsistencies:

- Provide an alternative rendering to the disabled user (e.g., speech
output) using the user agent document tree.
- Provide an alternative mechanism to complete forms using, say, voice
input by making use of the write access to the user agent document tree.
- Provide verbal notification of which viewport is selected through the
user agent provided access features.
- Provide navigation of viewports using speech input

In the paragraph "Existing practice"

Change "I believe that" to This is.

The paragraph "The DOM" needs some wording (in my opinion). Here is a
sample rewrite.

The existence of platform and programming-language independent way to
access content reduces the difficulty for an AT to provide access to a User
Agent. It does this by reducing the learning curve to access an
application. Once a first implementation is supported, the cost of
extending the AT to other user agents or the same user agent on other
platforms is greatly reduced. It is important to note that the lack of a
standard for actually exposing the DOM itself to AT's may hinder its
acceptance. Also, since assistive technology products re usually designed
to work with software, other than user agents, requiring them to implement
a UA-specific interface may be burdensome. Finally, there is not yet a
platform-independent API for accessing user interface controls. The DOM
could be extended to include user interface controls in the future
providing a consistent platform-independent access solution. Today, access
to UI controls is disparate from client area access on all platforms.

Requirements for Communication:

checkpoint 5.2 modify the (e.g.) wording to (e.g. platform independent APIs
such as the DOM, ...

Navigation Checkpoints:

checkpoint 7.5 Searching for alternative content should be done by the AT.

Configuration Checkpoints:

Checkpoint 10.3 I thought we defined single key acces as keyboard access
that did not require a modifier at the December face to face meeting. Did
this not make it?


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 Thursday, 6 January 2000 09:58:50 UTC