Re: Responses to Bryan Campbell issues raised during second last call of UAAG 1.0

16-03-01 you wrote
>Please indicate before 27 March whether you are satisfied with
>the UAWG's resolutions, whether you wish the WG to carry forward

Hello Ian

The new wording for Guideline 1, seen below, is satisfactory. Another part
of my submission deals with Techniques in what has now become Guideline 7
Checkpoint 7.3 paragraph 11 remains unclear. Probably it is unclear because
the 2nd sentence expresses 2 different thoughts making it very long:

"Maintain consistency in the user interface between versions of the
software. Consistency is less important than improved general accessibility
and usability, but developers should make changes conservatively to the
layout of user interface controls, the behavior of existing
functionalities, and the default keyboard configuration."

Sentence 2 is fine till the 1st comma saying usability is more important
than consistency, a fact the rest of the sentence appears to contradict. A
few more words clarifies matters, "Consistency is less important than
improved general accessibility and usability when adding new controls.
However,". Replacing the 1st comma with the phrase "when adding new
controls. However," says do what is necessary for better usability with new
items while not changing any common default commands. The 2 ideas must be
in separate sentences so requirements that common defaults are 99.9%
unchanged is not interpreted as limiting the kinds of commands which may be
created to give very easy to use Accessibility. Such change will ensure
that later undue weight is not given to "existing functionalities" as
governing the Accessibility interface. I formally ask the WG to inform the
Director of the necessity of this change which I hope wont give the WG too
much more work as its task turned out to be far more involved than we
expected. My thanks to the WG for its work & for continuing to ask me to
review its efforts!

>[0] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2000OctDec/0248
>===============================================
>The UAWG agreed with you:

>#338: Editorial: Edits to Guideline 1 prose re: easy access 
>  Comment: The edited sentences in Guideline 1 about the importance
>  of keyboard access are:

>  "Keyboard operation (using as few keystrokes as possible) of all
>  functionalities offered through the user interface is one of the
>  most important aspects of user agent accessibility on almost every
>  platform. The keyboard is available to most users, it is widely
>  supported, and specialized input devices may reuse the keyboard API."

>  Please also note the evolution of our keyboard configuration
>  requirements in Guideline 11

Those ideas will help developers understand what most increases usability.


Regards,
Bryan Campbell

-> "Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle." Michelangelo

Received on Monday, 19 March 2001 10:21:35 UTC