Re: Primary content -- OK as a "Fuzzy" Concept?

In a word, No.

At 02:00 PM 2000-09-21 -0400, Hansen, Eric wrote:
>
>Facet 1: Audience
>PC is almost always intended for general audiences (people without any
>disability plus any people with disabilities who can make use of it) and AC
>is usually for people with disabilities.
>

The fact that this facet is a non-factor in our world model and rules is
very important.

Where there are alternatives, which alternative is superior is not known in
advance.  Only the user knows for sure, and that only after they have
exercised the choice guaranteed them by Checkpoint 2.3.

For any alternatives A and B, we presume that there are users Moe and Curly
such that Moe finds A preferable and Curly finds B preferable.  So we make
no distinction as to which is primary or secondary, nor do we allow the
User Agent to do so.  If we did, that would suggest the Moe's needs and
preferences or Curly's needs and preferences were more important.  We are
dealing astride a difference between people which is a frequent and
historical basis of discrimination, to the extent that laws have been
passed to combat the practice of such discrimination.  In this situation,
we not only do not discriminate between Moe's and Curly's favorite
alternatives, we are very careful not to give the appearance that we do.
Hence the proscription of "primary content" language.

The only thing that is primary is that the User Agent's primary
responsibility is to serve the will of the User.  This means to deliver
into the user's hands, voice, eye gaze or mouth-stick the control of
alternative selection whenever there are alternatives.

One example of cleaned-up language for the checkpoint would be as follows:

--

2.3 Where there are equivalent alternatives defined in the document, the
User Agent shall give the user control over which alternative(s) are
exposed, that is to say spoken or displayed.  The user agent may elect to
provide this capability in any of the following ways:
(1) allow configuration to select one or another alternative;  The selected
alternative shall by default be exposed in roughly the same relationship to
the rest of the active document view independent of selection among the
alternatives. 
(2) allow configuration including to expose two alternatives at once;  
(3) provide a way to inspect any hidden alternatives on selection of an
exposed alternative; 
(4) add a hyperlink into the document linking to the hidden alternatives
and  appearing in the textual order just before or just after the exposed
alternative. [Priority 1]

--

In the calculus of non-discrimination, the see-saw does not tilt toward the
end where there are more people.  If there is anyone at all on each side,
then the see-saw must _not_ tilt.

Al

Received on Thursday, 21 September 2000 20:56:35 UTC