Thread Subject: Re: Authoring Tools

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From: David Poehlman
Date: Thu, Apr 12 2007 7:20 PM

And Just to clear up any further confusion, I was responding to the
agreement with the remark. I did read the history though and the archive
trail is clear on this.

Andy, thanks for the summary though I might have missed it otherwise.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andi Snow-Weaver" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
To: "TEITAC Web/Software Subcommittee" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 11:25 AM
Subject: Re: [teitac-websoftware] Authoring Tools


Just to clear up any confusion. That wasn't my remark. That was my summary
of the collective discussion about the topic.

Andi




"David Poehlman"
<david.poehlman@h
andsontechnologey To
es.com> < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >,
Sent by: "TEITAC Web/Software Subcommittee"
teitac-websoftwar < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
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itac.org cc
"'Peterson, Bill'"
< = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
04/11/2007 09:32 Subject
PM Re: [teitac-websoftware] Authoring
Tools

Please respond to
TEITAC
Web/Software
Subcommittee
<teitac-websoftwa
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g>






spell check?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sailesh Panchang" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
To: "'TEITAC Web/Software Subcommittee'"
< = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Cc: "'Peterson, Bill'" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 10:12 AM
Subject: Re: [teitac-websoftware] Authoring Tools


I agree with Andi's remark :
"- Requiring the creation software to provide the assessment function is
too
restrictive. Software is available to do automated assessments and so this
function does not have to be built into every authoring tool."
The authoring tool is to create / edit content and must allow access to and
manipulation of the accessibility features permitted by the encoding
system.
The assessment tool is a tool to perform quality assurance and may be very
difficult to be built into the authoring tool in a manner that automated
checks can be performed comprehensively. An evaluation tool should be able
to work as a plug-in to the authoring tool or used in a stand alone fashion
as part of the collection of software tools used in the authoring
environment.
Sailesh Panchang
Senior Accessibility Engineer
Deque Systems Inc. (www.deque.com)
11130 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite #140,
Reston VA 20191
Phone: 703-225-0380 (ext 105)
E-mail: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
[mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Hoffman,
Allen
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 9:38 AM
To: TEITAC Web/Software Subcommittee
Cc: Peterson, Bill
Subject: Re: [teitac-websoftware] Authoring Tools

I think we are making this more difficult than it may need to be.
Basically what I think we can say is that authoring tools shall provide
the functionality to the user to access and manipulate the accessibility
attributes supported in the format being used. I don't think it can
easily be scaled up to the whole collections as it won't be something
usable at the end of the day to actually determine compliance. I'd like
to keep the ability to assess and remediate content using the tool, or
plug-ins to the tool, or another item that interfaces with the format
and/or tool to allow the same thing.

I hope I'm making sense for you all.

Let me just break this down to simple examples:

if you have an application that allows inclusion of pictures in the
file, you must include the ability to include text descriptions if the
text description attribute is in the format. If your program provides
the ability to create tables, it should provide the ability to encode
table header/cell associations, if available in the format, etc. This
can't solve all problems but gets us to a point where we may have a
minimum "content format" standard for the accessibility attributes, and
the requirement that people are able to use them. if all tools in the
content delivery chain include this functionality, and are using a
format that includes the attributes, we "can" do accessible content,
which is not the case in many situations now.

Content encapsulation into other formats can be a real problem, but at
least if the components have the accessibility, an encapsulation
container can pass those through from the source. I haven't figured out
how to write that requirement for encapsulators yet but it would be
nice.





Allen Hoffman -- 202-447-0303

-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
[mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Sean
Hayes
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 9:03 AM
To: TEITAC Web/Software Subcommittee
Subject: Re: [teitac-websoftware] Authoring Tools

I think this proposal as it relates to a collection of tools has some
significant holes. In an authoring tool chain many content formats may
get used, only one of which is actually published. E.g Camera RAW,
Photoshop PSD, PNG.

The fact that accessibility data is added to, or not deleted, in the PSD
doesn't really help end user accessibility, as it needs to be in the
final delivered package; and in fact in the web case it would largely
need to be in the HTML which is wrapped around the PNG not the PNG
itself.

We need something more along the lines of: A collection of tools needs
to be able to preserve existing, and insert all the necessary
information in the appropriate places in the final published output -
which may be a collection of content formats.

How you write that as a testable provision, especially one which allows
procurement of the individual tools before they become a collection, I'm
not sure.

Sean Hayes
Standards and Policy Team
Corporate Accessiblity Group
Microsoft
Phone:
mob +44 7977 455002
office +44 117 9719730


-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
[mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Andi
Snow-Weaver
Sent: 10 April 2007 22:54
To: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Subject: [teitac-websoftware] Authoring Tools


Getting back to Allen's proposal for a provision specific to authoring
tools:

Allen's original proposal on March 5th [1] was:

When software allows creation of, or modification to information stored
in a specific set of encoding formats, all accessibility attributes
contained in those formats must be available to the author, and
programmatic assessment and remediation of those attributes must be
provided to expedite such creation or modification.

We discussed it at both the March 7th [2] and 14th [3] meetings.

The discussion summaries are quite long but I believe these are the
major
points:

- We need a definition of content that addresses Web content, e-mail,
and office software documents
- We should use the W3C definition of authoring tool - Any software or
collection of software components used to create or modify web content
for publication.
- Requiring the creation software to provide the assessment function is
too restrictive. Software is available to do automated assessments and
so this function does not have to be built into every authoring tool.
- Authoring tools should not delete or alter any accessibility
attributes that are already in the content (in the case of editing
existing content)
- Content production often involves several steps, with different tools
being used in each step. May be too restrictive to require every tool in
the process to provide the authoring function proposed above. The
collection of tools must support ATAG or whatever requirements are
defined in 508.
- Content management systems need to be included
- What approaches would be incentives for vendors to produce tools that
create accessible content?

So .... here's an alternative proposal:

Any software or collection of software components used by people to
create or modify content, including but not limited to Web content
authoring tools, multimedia editing tools, word processors, and content
management systems, shall:
- allow the author to utilize all accessibility features defined by the
content format
- avoid deleting or altering any accessibility attributes that exist in
the content

with the following definitions:
content: any information that is encountered as part of a user
experience including but not limited to text, images, sounds, videos and
animations [4], content format: an encoding mechanism for storing
information. Examples are HTML, JPEG, SMIL, PDF, others?

Comments?

[1]
http://teitac.org/wiki/Web_and_Software:content#Add_provisions_to_addres
s_authoring_tools_and_user_agents
[2] http://teitac.org/wiki/Web_and_Software:_March_7
[3] http://teitac.org/wiki/Web_and_Software:_March_14
[4] adapted from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_content

Andi

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