RE: Question about access to ALL content - UAAG 2.1 P1

Hans,

I would agree with this.  The goal is to make the *information* of the page
accessible to the user.  Sometimes, for the person who wants to know how
something is done in HTML, showing the source is the information that is
being sought.  But in many cases, showing the source would make the
information content of the page less accessible, not more.  It would be
equivalent to someone asking why the sky is blue, and being directed to the
Encyclopedia Britannica.  The information is there, but it is so buried in
irrelevant information as to be inaccessible.

Part of making information accessible is isolating it from the surrounding
noise.  This is equivalent to the issue of table cells.  If your screen
reader reads line by line across the screen, you do get the words of a
specific table cell, but buried in other non-information.  The goal is to
get the *specific* information that a person wants.

Denis Anson

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ua-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ua-request@w3.org]On
Behalf Of Hans Riesebos
Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2000 6:33 AM
To: charles@w3.org; ij@w3.org
Cc: pjenkins@us.ibm.com; w3c-wai-ua@w3.org
Subject: Re: Question about access to ALL content - UAAG 2.1 P1


Ian,

When showing the source would not solve a checkpoint, it does not say that
it is a wrong thing to do. It also does not need to be changed into
something else. The people that want to show the source will probably gain
something from it.
I also think that source and content are not synonym.

The minimum requirement could be that the "current content" be presented as
HTML/XML code. This presentation could be radically different from what
source was used in to begin with.

Hans Riesebos
ALVA BV, The Netherlands
HRiesebos@alva-bv.nl

First Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>
> I don't think that it is accesible - I think you are understimating the
> difficulty many people have in understanding a arkup language - both those
> with cognitive disabilities and many others. And in any case the solution
> will only really work for relatively simple markup languages - although it
is
> possible to learn postscript or RF as well as HTML there are not many
people
> who do it. Any reasonably complex XML language can become incomprehensible
> fairly quickly, and users should not be expected to read the language
> (otherwise why bother with a user agent that interprets it in the first
> place).

Then Ian Jacobs wrote
So what are our options?

1) Render the content by ignoring all markup. This may cause
   confusion as well since all structure is lost.

2) Render alternative content (or primary content for that matter)
   according to the rendering instructions of the markup language.
   This won't work for HTML or XML applications.

3) Require that the user agent implement a default style sheet
   for any markup language it supports. What should that style sheet
   be? We don't have a standard one for XML applications. One that comes
   to mind will present the content according to the structure of the
   document, which takes us back to the source view.

4) Require that the author supply a style sheet for all types of
content.
   I don't think this helps either the author or the user.

My fear is that we are going to try to define a line for what is
considered
accessible rendering. How do you determine that a user agent (even
a mainstream browser) has rendered content above that line? Where do you
draw that line?

I think it does make sense to say that the *minimal* requirement
is to make the document source available. (I can't think of anything
less than that, hence minimal).

Where do you draw the line after the minimal requirement?

 - Ian

Received on Wednesday, 29 March 2000 08:01:27 UTC