Re: Issues and comments arising from UA evaluations

I believe this is essential. When you are dealing with simple objects like
buttons or menus that really change infrequently, and which provide little
data, there is less reason to go back to the well to get informaiton.

In contrast if you were to have a spreadsheet with embedded objects or
dynamic web content that can change frequently or which can contain large
amounts of data then accessing it out of process is inadaquate to do the
job.

Rich

Rich Schwerdtfeger
Senior Technical Staff Member
IBM Accessibility Center
Research Division
EMail/web: schwer@us.ibm.com

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.",
Frost



                                                                                                                                        
                      aaronl@netscape.c                                                                                                 
                      om (Aaron                To:       Richard Schwerdtfeger/Austin/IBM@IBMUS                                         
                      Leventhal)               cc:       "Ian B. Jacobs" <ij@w3.org>, w3c-wai-ua@w3.org, w3c-wai-ua-request@w3.org      
                      Sent by:                 Subject:  Re: Issues and comments arising from UA evaluations                            
                      w3c-wai-ua-reques                                                                                                 
                      t@w3.org                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                        
                      03/13/2002 06:23                                                                                                  
                      PM                                                                                                                
                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                        



To what extent do people think in-process DOM access is useful to AT
vendors?

Aaron


Richard Schwerdtfeger wrote:
      Aaron,

      I think the concept of a DOM is clear to people doing actual web
      browser or
      server-based document development such as XML transcoding work. In
      this
      arena they use the W3C DOM. Our document intends for UA developers to
      implement the W3C DOM (core, CSS, etc.) This does not preclude a UA
      from
      adding additional function like Microsoft for highlighting text.

      A DOM is simply an object model representation of a document. I don't
      understand why an AT vendor would have trouble with this. Just
      because the
      W3C defines a standard one that we with UA's to support does not mean
      that
      an office product could not use a different DOM representation. ...
      but if
      you think some education is needed we might be able to do this
      through the
      WAI.

      Regarding interfaces, I had pushed on the PF group to create a
      sub-DOM
      working group to address user interfaces and was unsuccessful. It
      certainly
      would be nice to extend the DOM to
      the chrome of a browser. Perhaps
      Netscape could be the first.

      On an aside: If Freedom is parsing the HTML themselves this is a
      major work
      effort as they have to do error correction, etc. Also, if Freedom
      parses
      into their own DOM and due to different error correction techniques
      they
      have 2 different represenations of the same document you can run into
      more
      problems. This is also problematic for when XML-based formats need to
      be
      processed.

      It's much better if the UA provides a W3C DOM interface so that the
      solution is in synch with what is rendered and things like the core
      DOM API
      can be supported independent of whether the content is XML-based or
      SGML-based in the case of HTML.

      Rich

      Rich Schwerdtfeger
      Senior Technical Staff Member
      IBM Accessibility Center
      Research Division
      EMail/web: schwer@us.ibm.com

      "Two roads diverged in a wood,
      and I -
      I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the
      difference.",
      Frost




                            aaronl@netscape.c

                            om (Aaron                To:       "Ian B.
      Jacobs" <ij@w3.org>

                            Leventhal)               cc:
      w3c-wai-ua@w3.org

                            Sent by:                 Subject:  Re: Issues
      and comments arising from UA evaluations

                            w3c-wai-ua-reques

                            t@w3.org



                            03/13/2002 03:40

                            PM







      Ian B. Jacobs wrote:

              - AT developers may not, in practice, be interested in
                implementing the DOM, even though in the past they have
                expressed interest.


      Freedom Scientific markets their products as making use of the DOM.
      However, they are not talking about the W3C DOMs -- they are talking
      about proprietary DOMs such as those that exist in Microsoft Word or
      Microsoft Excel via very powerful COM or ActiveX interfaces. For
      their
      Internet Explorer support they currently parse the HTML themselves.

      Anyway, I think what a "DOM" is, is clear to us in the context of W3C
      document, but may not be clear to AT vendors who use many different
      kinds of DOMs. They are probably interested in any kinjd of
      cross-process interfaces that give them content..

      In addition, the W3C DOM does not say anything about user intefaces,
      unless they are written in markup, which is not always the case. How
      does the UAAG suggest we expose information about our user interface
      widgets?

      Aaron

Received on Thursday, 14 March 2002 10:58:48 UTC