- From: Doug Schepers <schepers@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:15:36 -0400
- To: www-archive <www-archive@w3.org>
Hi, Jonathan- > On 22 Jul 2008, at 18:26, Doug Schepers wrote: >> >> As usual, you are twisting the facts to suit your claim. >> >> Your claim was that 20% of people in the UK are functionally >> illiterate (I think that figure is high, Jonathan Chetwynd wrote (on 7/22/08 4:43 PM): > > regarding the claim that 20% of people in the UK are functionally > illiterate may I refer you to the very well respected report 'A Fresh > Start' by Lord Moser for the UK Government: > http://www.lifelonglearning.co.uk/mosergroup/ Once again, you've cut quotes short. Misquoting is effectively fabrication. You imply that I deny the 20% figure, while what I actually said is that though I've seen conflicting figures, I was willing to grant your claim for the sake of argument, but thought you were misusing the statistics. > Improving Literacy and Numeracy > A Fresh Start > The report of the working group chaired by Sir Claus Moser. > Chapter 1: The Problem and Our Strategy > 1.1 Something like one adult in five in this country is not functionally > literate and far more people have problems with numeracy. Yes, again, you've cut the quote short. This study actually states: "Some 7 million adults in England - one in five adults - if given the alphabetical index to the Yellow Pages, cannot locate the page reference for plumbers. That is an example of functional illiteracy. It means that one in five adults has less literacy than is expected of an 11-year-old child. These figures - based on official surveys - are inevitably estimates, and may be a little on the high side: but the order of magnitude is certainly right. [...] One in sixteen adults, if shown the poster in Figure A, cannot say where the concert is being held." So, te study itself says pretty much the same thing I said... that the figures are probably a little high. Again, you dodge the issue that you claim that these are the same people who can't use alternate media. Can you offer any evidence to that claim, or will you again conveniently drop this point in your next email? > I have referred in the past to this report in emails to the www-svg list. I don't believe that's correct. I searched for references to emails from you with the keywords "literacy", "illiteracy", "illiterate", "Moser", "lifelonglearning", "read", and other keywords, but no references to that study. Perhaps you alluded to it in passing. I've also read about a UN survey that came to a similar conclusion. > Communication and literacy rely on both reading and writing. Note that this survey is about "functional literacy", not the ability to read... it's about the ability to use reading skills to solve daily problems. The examples in the survey are more than simple reading tasks, they involve reasoning skills as well. I don't know if these same people would have an easier or a harder time finding and using resources on the Web, using a search engine. Note that this study doesn't discuss that many of the functionally illiterate may not be native speakers... they may be perfectly functionally literate in their own culture, but still fail at tasks in the less familiar UK language and culture. Almost 8% of UK's 60.5 million residents are overseas immigrants, with another approximately half-million illegal immigrants. None of this is to downplay the rather dire situation. But the great majority of these people, contrary to your claim, could use a phone (or VOIP, if available) or watch a TV (or follow a link to a video), or benefit from voice browsers. This is the essential question... how are the needs of these people, vis-à-vis the Web, best met? What are the specific needs identified. Finally, in what way is the Web most relevant to these people? These are tough questions, and honestly, I don't know the answers. You suggest that it is W3C's mandate and responsibility to devote substantial resources to solve this problem, based on this statement: [[ http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Points/ W3C's mission is to lead the Web to its full potential, which it does by developing technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) that will create a forum for information, commerce, inspiration, independent thought, and collective understanding. Today this universe benefits society by enabling new forms of human communication and opportunities to share knowledge. One of W3C's primary goals is to make these benefits available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability. ]] The key here is the statement on the means we employ to reach those goals: "developing technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools)". So, in short... W3C provides a technological foundation onto which other groups or individuals can build applications and resources that reach and improve the lives of as many people of wide variety as possible. There are already organizations that concentrate on addressing all manner of social ills (e.g., literacy; accessibility; feeding the poor; education in general; stopping war, crime, and violence; supporting freedom of expression; etc.), and W3C provides a forum for those organizations and individuals to come to terms with one small aspect of their task: technical standards. Don't underestimate the importance that this plays to the big picture. You talk in the abstract about wanting us to "engage with this community" directly. What evidence do you have to suggest that they want to engage with W3C? (I know my girlfriend gets bored senseless when I talk about Web standards with other geeks... even other geeks get bored talking about standards! What rational person would want to spend time talking about Web standards?) What makes you think W3C (that is, the Team and the Members) are the best people to engage with that community directly? If we did spend more time with that community directly, would we be serving the needs of the larger community, and accomplishing tasks that we are particularly well-suited for? No, in my opinion (and this is just my opinion), W3C needs to work with other agents who represent the wider constituents that you want us to reach. Those organizations and individuals need experts in technical standards to help them reach their goals. I wouldn't hire a plumber to fix the wiring in my house, and I wouldn't hire an electrician to fix a leaky pipe... they might be able to do it, but they wouldn't do as good a job and it would take longer. This is kind of a fundamental principle of society, you know... division of labor. > Current W3C web specifications are being developed by developers, for > developers and the corporations that employ them. Yup. And also by the non-profits and governments and foundations and charities that employ them. And for the independent developers that are interested in coding for other reasons than money, like starting communities, providing services, or just for fun. And for application developers who wrap the technical specifications in user interfaces so that average users who neither know nor care about the technical underpinnings can do things that do appeal to them, that are useful to them. Most of my family has probably never heard of HTML, much less RFC2646, but they all use the Web, and we talk via email. Regards- -Doug
Received on Wednesday, 23 July 2008 05:16:12 UTC