Thread Subject: Re: Content - proposed wording to address cognitive impairment challenges

Note

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From: Whitney Quesenbery
Date: Wed, Jun 27 2007 7:15 PM

Hi Peter and all

>Would it be possible for the Editorial Working Group to propose one or
>more ways in which we might present in our report to the Access
>Board? Also could the EWG propose one or more ways that such language be
>presented by the Access Board to the public & to agencies? It would be
>really helpful to have
>precise, concrete examples of this that TEITAC members could review and
>comment on. There are quite a few places in subcommittee work where the
>notion of having advisory/best-practice/sufficient technique language
>has come up. I fear much of those ideas will stall until we are
>comfortable with one or more structures into which to place such language.


For now, we can simply include any advisory/best-practice ("should")
provisions. As you probably know, many standards and regulations do contain
"should" provisions, although 508 does not.

The Documentation subcommittee has already included two of them:
http://teitac.org/wiki/EWG:Draft_May_30#D._Advisory_Notes
and
http://teitac.org/wiki/EWG:Draft_May_30#B._Advisory_Notes

For now, I think we can simply add them in the section with other related
requirements. This will make them easy to find and discuss (just because
they are advisory does not mean they do not need the same care as other
provisions we draft).

In the final report, we may choose to keep them in the main sections
(clearly identified as related Advisory Notes), or to group them all in a
single section.

I think that Advisory Notes are a good way to communicate good practices
that are helpful in improving accessibility, but which are difficult to
make a requirement because they require some judgement in application or
which may be a good "heuristic" (rule of thumb) but for which there are
always exceptions. (An example of both are rules like "Use active voice,
not passive" - it's a good rule, but there are hard-to-define exceptions
where passive is the right decision.)


Whitney Quesenbery
Whitney Interactive Design
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