Re: [archives] roadmap for repair cycle

At 05:50 PM 2001-03-22 +1100, Jason White wrote:
>Is there a reference available to a document or e-mail message describing
>what the supposed problems are? 

AG::

No there is no paper trail up until now.  There is prior correspondence but it
is not all in the archives and what is in the archives is scattered.  So we
need to re-build the record here.  That is why it is helpful to have this list
set up in a way that it can support special studies on an ad hoc basis.

>I have been using the W3C e-mail archives
>for years without any difficulty whatsoever, and a quick perusal of the
>HTML source doesn't reveal anything that would strike me as a significant
>access issue. Which checkpoints (either in WCAG 1.0 or WCAG 2.0) have not
>been met, or are there issues here which aren't reflected in the WCAG, but
>ought to be?
> 

The point where I hit the wall, that is to say I concluded that
"absolutely, we
need to do something about this," concerns the link content within the
table of
links to different index pages on the front page for the sub-site dedicated to
archiving one list.  If one goes for example to

w3c-wai-gl@w3.org Mail Archives
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl>http://lists.w3.org/Archive
s/Public/w3c-wai-gl/

And considers the injunction "make each link have distinguished link text" one
immediately finds a question raised by the fact that "date, thread, author,
subject" appear over and over for different links.

The entire difference between your success and the putative failure mode
probably has to do with a certain difference between caution and abandon in
approaching the page.  If one reads all text within the table, the date ranges
that qualify the "date, thread, author, subject" entries will be fresh in
one's
mind, and the links will be adequately identified.  On the other hand, if one
tries to go through this page by tabbing, the identity of the link targets is
effectively opaque.  You don't know which author index page is what.  Or for
that matter that 'author' is a category of index page.

This experience -- that you yourself don't miss what is missing -- illustrates
how one needs a continual supply of fresh newbies as testers.  The old testers
learn too many tricks along the way and stop noticing problems.

This table of links clearly violates checkpoint 5.1 [P1] of WCAG 1.0, and for
tabbing through violates 13.1 [P2] as well, 

I hope that is enough prima_facie evidence so that the judge will please grant
a warrant to investigate further.

Al

Received on Thursday, 22 March 2001 09:46:03 UTC