Thread Subject: Re: Authoring Tools

From: Hoffman, Allen
Date: Wed, Apr 11 2007 11:00 AM

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Nick asked:
"On a note of enforceability if a provision is going to require a
particular tool to provide access to a set of functions/attributes
dubbed accessibility features then would it also be necessary to
quantify these specific features in addition? If so then where would
this be?"
Salish wrote:

It would be the author's responsibility to be aware of the
accessibility features of the encoding mechanism being employed. The
authoring tool for HTML for instance should allow the author to set an
alt or longdesc for an IMG or a LABEL for an INPUT control or SCOPE for
a table cell. If it does not, it is a weakness in the tool. But knowing
when to use alt and when to use longdesc is primarily the author's
duty. One might reasonably expect the tool to list the accessibility
features supported and describe how one might be able to use them
through the particular tool. This is important for Procurement. The
documentation for the content format would be the place to review what
various accessibility features are and how and when they are to be used.

My take is:
Accessibility features for a format would be documented in the product
accessibility template for a format, e.g. Microsoft Word .doc, for
example, and then again in the answer to the question in the product
accessibility template for the tool itself. for tools that support
multiple formats, a method of representing the features made available
for those formats might be tricky of course.




Allen Hoffman -- 202-447-0303

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