Re: heuristics?

At 11:53 AM -0500 4/15/05, Jon Gunderson wrote:
>I think there are two views of this from my perspective.
>
>1. What do we want authors to do to make web resources more
>accessible and what types of tools do they need
>
>2. WHat do people with disabilities need to access real content.
>
>These are questions I am thinking about while developing the
>Mozilla Accessibility Extension.

Yes, 100% agreed.

Ref: http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/components

In fact, I have an iterative model where we start at the UA with what
will assist people with disabilities, carry that into the authoring
domain and try to figure out what of this we can reasonably expect to
worm out of authors with the aid of some semi-smart authoring tools.
After a couple iterations around that loop we have a pretty good
semantic model of accessible content. Then we create a binding for
this model through a two-layer connecting structure (formats and
guidelines on the application of those formats) the requirement to
capture and express some basics and the opportunity to capture and
express some more.

In other words we start on the demand side with 2. check the
supply side for 1. and iterate and negotiate to a compromise.
Then the binding, the formal expression, is a) a design problem and b)
a negotiation problem to get the format parts embedded in
the format specs and the guidelines parts published by the WAI.

Al

>
>Jon
>
>
>---- Original message ----
>>Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 12:17:17 -0400
>>From: Al Gilman <Alfred.S.Gilman@IEEE.org> 
>>Subject: heuristics? 
>>To: wai-xtech@w3.org
>>
>>
>>
>>I hear from Jon and Cathy Laws "we don't want to talk about
>heuristics."
>>
>>I think that we need to have more discussion of this point.
>>
>>Deconstruct the concept 'heuristics' into a richer model of
>the processing
>>and its specification and the life-cycle of the content
>properties that
>>are sensed in the processing.  And have a fresh discussion of
>how far
>>down the road of laying work on the UA we ought to go as
>opposed to
>>asking for high quality content from the authors.  In
>addition, the
>>techniques that seem too burdensome to deploy in Customer
>Premises
>>Equipment software AT, may still be relevant to apply within
>authoring
>>tools as drivers for hints that aid the author in producing
>the markup that
>>the client-side processors need.
>>
>>I am perhaps inclined to propose solutions that are part
>UA-algorithm,
>>such as inspecting the ancestors of an element for
>orientation cues
>>before saying that the element is inadequately explained in
>the content
>>for the purpose of orienting AT users.
>>
>>This sort of a processing rule, a search-path directive,
>could be in a grey
>>area that some would call a heuristic and others would not.
>>
>>The state of practice suggests that currently it takes
>heuristics to
>>support users with current web content.
>>
>>My star example in this regard is the command that says "seek
>forward
>>until you find more than N consecutive characters of non-link
>text."
>>
>>This is very low-level, and hence robust and omnivorous.  It
>presumes
>>nothing about page structure other than that links are
>recognizable, so
>>text can be classified into link text and non-link text.  And
>it takes a
>>heuristic test, the length of text that is present between
>two adjacent
>>links, as a prognostic for where there is main content, or at
>least
>>allows skipping material which is a very dense sequence of links.
>
>>
>>So one possible test for success on our proposals could be stated
>>as:  "What combination of easier processing in the assistive
>technology,
>>coupled with what level of uptake in the web content production
>>world, would mean that users would stop using the heuristic-rule
>>keystroke and use the more formalized methods?"
>>
>>Al
>>
>
>
>Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., ATP
>Director of IT Accessibility Services
>Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES)
>and
>Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology
>Disability Resources and Education Services (DRES)
>
>Voice: (217) 244-5870
>Fax: (217) 333-0248
>
>E-mail: jongund@uiuc.edu
>
>WWW: http://cita.rehab.uiuc.edu/
>WWW: https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/jongund/www/

Received on Friday, 15 April 2005 17:27:04 UTC