- From: Jonathan Chetwynd <j.chetwynd@btinternet.com>
- Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 17:44:26 +0100
- To: "William Loughborough" <love26@gorge.net>, <wai-tech-comments@w3.org>, <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>, "Sean B. Palmer" <sean@mysterylights.com>, "Al Gilman" <asgilman@iamdigex.net>
To restate the 3 editorial points that I made, not just the one.... 3* Media like languages are alternatives, the title of a film tells me something about the film, but not a lot. Would you prefer to see the film or read the title? For those people that cannot see, the answer is perhaps clearer, though if they can hear, they might possibly prefer to listen, and not just have a machine read a text. Automated artificial voices are not generally preferred by many, though plenty like to listen to the professional voices of those they have never met. I don't feel that teletext is wildly successful, and if you asked the average punter to watch 'friends' in any xml repurposed form I think you'd have a problem. If you forced a nation to, you just might have a riot. All I am suggesting is that one could be more positive and say for instance: whereas non-textual content is less easily repurposed (by machines) at the present time. repurposing has a use, but no amount of xml will improve -on offering alternatives-. That is my case, they are alternatives and repurposing is only one tool in the kit bag. 1>A document is accessible if it can be equally understood by its targeted audience regardless of the device used to access it. I don't think this makes sense, It is brief, but we've had problems defining accessibility, and this doesn't fit. 2>>This semantics knowledge can be provided through human readable documentation of course, but having machine readable assertions of semantics that can then be used to present the document in various media is paramount for pervasive access (that is, you don't need a programmer, you just need a program). Enabling others to map from your language to existing ones, or vice versa, is a useful accessibility feature. What efforts are being made to encourage semantic content of images to be exported? is it paramount? pervasive access often means providing a variety of media alternatives. Hope this doesn't all seem to contrary, but whilst recognising that tags normally contain text, I do feel that much is being attempted for the presentation of text, and little for the (cultural) dynamics of images, and all in the name of accessibility. No amount of text presentation will improve accessibility for people locked into a visual world. *3>Textual alternatives, for instance, can be repurposed for many different output devices, whereas non-textual content is often confined to a certain set of devices jonathan chetwynd IT teacher (LDD) j.chetwynd@btinternet.com http://www.peepo.com "The first and still the best picture directory on the web"
Received on Saturday, 15 September 2001 13:10:55 UTC