A few editorial comments on "Shared Web Experiences: Barriers Common to Mobile Device Users and People with Disabilities

Hi Yeliz,

Below are a few comments on the 8 September 2008 version of the "Shared 
Web Experiences: Barriers Common to Mobile Device Users and People with 
Disabilities" document:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/experiences-new.html

Mostly typo fixes for ease of reading and consistency purpose.
Beware, some suggestions may actually be incorrect, I'm not a native 
English speaker ;-)

In short, the document's content looks good and I agree with the 
consistency remark Jo just sent: you should choose between referring to 
users as "User", "Users", or even omitting it and stick to that. The 
same goes with "Device" which is sometimes referred to as "Mobile 
Device", and with "can't" sometimes written as "cannot", "don't" as "do 
not", ...


Large page or large images
-----
"[User] is unable to relate different areas of a page so becomes 
disoriented or has to scroll excessively"
For ease of reading:
"[User] is unable to relate different areas of a page *, and* so becomes 
disoriented or has to scroll excessively"


Multimedia with no captions
-----
"often in noisy places (streets, nightclubs) can't hear."
Subject is missing:
"Users often can't hear in noisy places (streets, nightclubs)".


Audio-only prompts...
-----
Again, for consistency purpose, the text should be the same as in 
"Multimedia with not captions".


Free-text entry...
-----
I don't know if there is a reason for the order of the barriers, but I 
would move this one to after "Important information in non-text 
content..." so that all barriers referring to non-text alternatives are 
listed together.


Embedded non-text objects...
-----
"Already small images re-dimensioned even smaller in adaptation, become 
meaningless"
The sentence is a bit obscure. Suggestion:
"Images shrunk in size to fit the device's screen may become meaningless"


Important information in non-text content
-----
I'm not sure I see a clean distinction between that and the above 
"Embedded non-text objects..." barrier or even with the "Multimedia with 
no captions" one. I would simply remove this barrier, and possibly merge 
it with "Embedded non-text objects..." to emphasize the fact that this 
is primordial for "important" information.


Content formatted using tables or CSS...
-----
"Mobile Context: Meaning of content altered by reformatting or 
restructuring in adaptation process."
I completely miss the point here. Could you clarify?
I also wonder whether the following two best practices should also be 
listed here:
[TABLES_NESTED] Do not use nested tables.
[TABLES_ALTERNATIVES] Where possible, use an alternative to tabular 
presentation.


Missing or inappropriate page title
-----
"Missing, or inappropriate, or long page title means user cannot scan 
easily get an overview."
"to" is missing:
"Missing, or inappropriate, or long page title means user cannot scan 
easily *to* get an overview."


Not descriptive link label
-----
Shouldn't the title be "Non descriptive link label?"
There's a "t" missing in:
"User cannot determine to follow or no*t* to follow a link"


Blinking, moving, scrolling or auto-updating content
-----
"make it difficult"
-> "make*s* it difficult"


Hope this helps,
Francois.

Received on Wednesday, 10 September 2008 10:05:07 UTC