RE: SVGAccessibilityWG: has-been-clicked or a:visited

Regards-
Doug Schepers

doug . schepers  @ vectoreal.com
www.vectoreal.com

"Move into the future..." 

| -----Original Message-----
| From: www-svg-request@w3.org [mailto:www-svg-request@w3.org] 
| On Behalf Of Jonathan Chetwynd
| Sent: Monday, November 08, 2004 7:17 PM
| To: Jim Ley
| Cc: www-svg@w3.org; Chris Lilley
| Subject: Re: SVGAccessibilityWG: has-been-clicked or a:visited
| 
| 
| Jim,
| 
| thanks for your consistently timely and helpful responses.
| I am not trying to dictate or impose anything, please stop 
| insinuating this.
| 
| I am raising the issue of accessibility, and the need for 
| updated documentation on this essential concept.
| 
| I'd like to see the mission statement in the charter include 
| the word 'accessibility', and describe meeting the needs of 
| people, the disabled as well as the general public, rather 
| than emphasising the technological aspects, as it currently does.
| 
| The Mozilla accessibility expert Aaron Leventhal was recently quoted: 
| "SVG is not accessible yet at all"

I'm not sure that you're putting that in the right context, Jonathan. The
actual quote is:

"ML: How accessible should we expect new applications developed on Mozilla
technologies to be? Like for example the Mozilla Amazon Browser. Do
programmers have to take care of anything special to insure their aplication
accessibility? To what extent? I would guess that keyboard support is pretty
good with the core technologies, but what about screen reader support?

"AL: [...] The answer for web content is easy. Alas, SVG and MathML are not
accessible yet at all. Static HTML is fine as long as gudelines and common
sense are followed (disclaimer: some assistive technologies still don't
support Mozilla well, such as the JAWS screen reader). Dynamic web content
is still a problem that we're working on." [1] 


| The Macromedia accessibility expert Bob Regan is a partner 
| with a UK web based project and The Rix Centre, and 
| intimately concerned with the needs of people with learning 
| disabilities.
| Are members of the WG keen to encourage anyone to author SVG? 
| flash has managed this, and people with mild to severe 
| learning difficulties have used the tools available to create 
| graphics and animations in flash, but not to my knowledge in SVG.
| 
| It may be that SVG is in danger of becoming a technology for 
| industry, but not for people.
| The potential is undoubtedly there, but is the feedback? This 
| isn't just theory, it means paying attention to users.
| It has to be done asap, so that the delay in updating specs, 
| guidelines etc is minimal.
| Do you consider that this has been done, between 1.1 and 1.2? 
| is there any evidence?
| 
| I've replied to your other comments below*.
| 
| regards
| 
| Jonathan Chetwynd
| http://www.peepo.co.uk     "It's easy to use"
| irc://freenode/accessibility
| 
| *<g border="grey"> is simple, most people don't want to know 
| the details of how this might be implemented.
| http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG12/vectoreffects.html seems complex 
| rather than simple. Frankly I have to say, i haven't got a 
| clue what this document is about. The description at the 
| beginning lacks clarity imho, i didn't understand the 
| categories, and there are a  number of typos. I am at a total 
| loss to understand your suggestion "it's much simpler in the future."
| 
| you say " However alt is much better provided for with both 
| description, and metadata giving the ability to describe the 
| image in considerable detail"
| however this is typical of a 'bloat mentality' (no offence 
| intended), more doesn't of necessity mean better.
| Even use of alt, title and desc isn't systematic by html 
| authors, which leads to endless confusion for users.
| 
| just a short example. the new WWAAC browser reads all html 
| alt, title and desc data it finds, and isn't configurable in 
| this respect.
| try to imagine someone trying to comprehend all this, even if 
| authored sensitively. now try imagining someone trying to 
| configure a suitable viewer. how would they navigate thru this lot?
| so if the SVG desc and metadata are also completely 
| non-standardised, users wont find it easy to use.
| Imagine that they are expected to navigate thru masses of 
| metadata, to find the alt content, that may not even be present.
| ok well maybe they're also on a mobile phone, sounds like a 
| disaster area to me :-(
| 
| We need not just good but great defaults.
| 
| if you can honestly say "I don't use links in SVG documents," 
| then you really don't have a good reason for commenting on 
| this aspect.
| An SVG portal of necessity needs links. One wants not just 
| theoretical, but a practical understanding of the issues.
| The benefit of feedback is that, it doesn't provide 
| hindsight, but does provide dead-reckoning.
| If on the other hand you don't think SVG should include 
| links, that is a different matter.

Received on Tuesday, 9 November 2004 00:33:32 UTC