Thread Subject: Re: Keyboard operability proposal

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From: Mike Paciello
Date: Thu, May 10 2007 9:55 AM

Sean -

I like the way that you've broken things down below and share your concern
involving an all-encompassing definition that will likely take us down a
proverbial rat hole. Deborah Buck has acknowledged that this topic as not
come up within SubPart A. I'm researching other standards (IEEE, ANSI, ISO)
for additional reference material.

- Mike


Mike Paciello, TPG

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From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
[mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Sean Hayes
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2007 11:20 AM
To: TEITAC Web/Software Subcommittee
Subject: Re: [teitac-websoftware] Keyboard operability proposal



I share your discomfort.



I think we have at least three things to define:



Data - somewhat like my definition of content (to cover Allan's provisions)

Software - which mainly covers the programs that interpret and generate data
(content-1)

The grey area in the middle - which includes stuff like HTML, CSS, Flash,
Java etc. which is equally well described as data or software depending on
context.



The problem is that, depending on how you choose to look at it, it's all
data - and ultimately everything we process digitally: music, video
software, word documents etc are all just encoded as a very big number.



We aren't going to be able to draw very bright lines around these concepts,
but without some rough operational determination of terms the standards
aren't going to be very enforceable.



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



From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
[mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Andrew
Kirkpatrick
Sent: 10 May 2007 16:04
To: TEITAC Web/Software Subcommittee
Subject: Re: [teitac-websoftware] Keyboard operability proposal



Sean,

The problem with that kind of definition is we have content = "stuff",
programs="stuff" therefore content = programs. I'm pretty sure we are not
going to pin this down that kind of definition without essentially writing
(or referencing) a fairly thick tome on computer science.

I think that there is a significant problem with talking about content
separately from the web standards (or software for that matter). Take
captions on a video or equivalents for an image in HTML - we're already
requiring this type of content in the web standards and video standards. I
know that Allen's proposal is talking about "content formats" which may fit
with your straw man definition, but until we decide how we will collectively
think about

what content is I'm going to remain uncomfortable about this.



AWK

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