Thread Subject: Re: Cognitive Proposals

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From: Smith, Jamie
Date: Thu, Apr 12 2007 7:10 AM

With cognitive disabilities I strongly feel it is the CONTENT folks -
the writers - designers, who need to understand this need. Many web
folk, of which I am one, have entities like their public relations folks
saying this is how we want the page to look (can be very "busy")and then
get text that is written as if it should be in a publication. In my
case, small division, I have lots of liberties as I am also the
"content" manager. I can rewrite text to make it easier to read. Many
times I justify this with readability testing. Folks like to have a
"concrete" reason. Saying it is "too hard", didn't make. I've also
been able to share with our staff some great articles called writing for
the web. (showing how bulleted list and headers, white space, etc.)
Unfortunately, most web folks do not always have this power. That is
why I'm scared about allowing folks to use the "click here". Then a web
persons who may not know the content will be responsible to "make-up
some title". I guess this goes beyond the scope of what we can do. I
am glad to see so many people making standards that will make it
possible to level the playing field.

-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
[mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Andi
Snow-Weaver
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 4:45 PM
To: TEITAC Web/Software Subcommittee
Subject: Re: [teitac-websoftware] Cognitive Proposals

William,

You are right. This is a big area with many issues. But we do have
several members of the group who have identified themselves as having a
cognitive disability. And we had a presentation at the last TEITAC
meeting from an expert in this field. He made some specific
recommendations [1]. Since cognitive is one of the themes identified by
the TEITAC that we are to expore, we are attempting to act on Dr. Lewis'
recommendations.

[1] http://teitac.org/wiki/Web_and_Software:_Cognitive_recommendations

Andi





William

Loughborough

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itac.org


Subject
Re: [teitac-websoftware]
Cognitive
04/11/2007 09:15 Proposals

AM





Please respond to

TEITAC

Web/Software

Subcommittee

<teitac-websoftwa

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g>









Andi Snow-Weaver wrote:
> Jamie made the last set of recommendations around addressing cognitive

> disabilities...
>
I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that a big part of our
difficulty with getting down to it with "cognitive disabilities" is that
most of us are clueless as to just what-all that encompasses.

We don't seem to have very many professionals on board who deal with
this on a daily basis and I haven't encountered many people in WGs/lists
who qualify as members of the class of those having "cognitive
disabilities" - except myself (although I prefer to think of mine as
Ageing Disability) and Lisa Seeman of W3C/WAI's Protocols & Formats WG
(she's dyslexic and brilliant).

There are so many diagnoses that put one into a "cognitive disability"
box that I think we need more grounding in the field. Unless/until we
have some better basis for dealing with recommendations we will not get
much useful done. Any requirements for one "branch" of "cognitive" may
not apply to other branches, might even be "harmful" for accessibility.

Love.

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