Thread Subject: Re: action item from02/28/2007proposalforuser-agent and authoring web/softwarerequirements
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From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Wed, Mar 07 2007 3:00 PM
Subject: Re: action item from02/28/2007proposalforuser-agent and authoring web/softwarerequirements
> 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. This feature can be built in
> or available through a third party solution.
I'm concerned about a different part of this - there are tools that
allow people to create web content with an easy press of a button, and
allow the user few options to modify the content. These applications
may be targeted at users who don't understand accessibility, so it seems
that it is not a bad thing if the content produced is accessible even if
the user didn't do anything to make it so, but this wording would
prohibit this even though this process may be ideal for certain types of
content.
I'll give an example, if there is a tool that pulls in presentation
files and generates an accessible interactive version. The presentation
contained accessibility attribute information added in the original
presentation tool, and that information is used in a predictable,
appropriate, and unchangable way in the interactive version. The author
has access to the attributes via the original presentation tool, but
there are additional attributes that are created automatically in the
user interface playback controls for the generated interactive version.
The process for the author to generate the interactive version with the
accessibility information is to choose "make interactive version" from a
menu. Does this sound like something that should be discouraged? I
don't think so - it may not work for every type of content a designer
can envision, but it seems that it should be permissible because it can
work for some.
AWK
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