Thread Subject: Re: 7-C Prompts (in authoring tools)

Note

This archival content is maintained by WebAIM and NCDAE on behalf of TEITAC and the U.S. Access Board . Additional details on the updates to section 508 and section 255 can be found at the Access Board web site.

From: Hoffman, Allen
Date: Tue, Mar 18 2008 1:05 PM

I believe this can be resolved at representation time:

In an accessibility statement a vendor might say:

XXX meets this provision without aid of other products.

or

XXX when used with yyy meets this provision.

or

XXX does not meet this provision, and at time of writing, no add-on
tools are known that allow xxx to meet this provision.

The vendor may not have to bundle the applications, but providing this
information of add-on known products does tell the purchaser that the
capacity is available in the market. Alternately a vendor can just
build this functionality in, bundle products to meet this, or not meet
it.






Allen Hoffman -- = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ; v: 202-447-0303

-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
[mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Andrew
Kirkpatrick
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 2:45 PM
To: Judy Brewer; TEITAC Committee
Subject: Re: [teitac-committee] 7-C Prompts (in authoring tools)

My comments below
> Just to be clear about one thing, the intent of this language was not
> to force an association between tools where a given vendor was not
> intending to offer a specific package of tools. Instead it was to
> allow a vendor the flexibility to offer a package that combines their
> own products with second or third party products that might having
> prompting capabilities that their own products lacked. If one of your
> concerns is that your products might be forced into a suite by someone

> on the procurement side, this seems correctable with a note indicating

> something along these lines:
> "Note: Such a suite would only be defined by the vendor"
> or it could be integrated, as follows:
> "or suite of tools used to author content" could become "or
> suite of tools as defined by the vendor, and used to author content"

I'm not sure that this resolves the issue, which is that we can have a
tool that is able to comply with the standards as long as a separate
tool is used correctly, and the result is complications in procurement.
I'm hearing you say that the suite could made to be only defined by the
vendor, but if it is still evaluated against this standard we are
potentially requiring that vendors bundle their software with other
vendors even if the tool is doing what it should already. Maybe I'm
misreading this, but this is my concern.

> >An example: Adobe has a tool called Presenter. The main function
of
> >Presenter is to import Microsoft PowerPoint files and generate an
> >accessible web-based Flash presentation that utilizes accessibility
> >information contained in the PowerPoint file (e.g. equivalents for
> >images, content order). I can see contracting officers wondering if
> the
> >fact that Presenter doesn't prompt for this information makes it not
> >compliant - should PowerPoint provide the prompting, or should
> Presenter
> >prompt for the information when it is missing, or should presenter
> >prompt for the information _always_ since it _might_ not be correct?
>
> I believe that this general issue is addressed in the following
phrase:
> "...must provide a mode which prompts authors to create
> accessible content for accessibility problems that the tool
> or suite has the capability to analyze or correct, ..."

How do we determine if a piece of software has this ability? If a tool
works with an evaluation tool to examine compliance with the standards
is that evaluation tool now part of the authoring tool or authoring tool
suite?

AWK

WebAIM is an initiative of:
Center for Persons with Disabilities (CPD) Utah State University