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Re: JWAS and special characters pronunciation

for

From: Olaf Drümmer
Date: Jan 3, 2014 3:00AM

Hi Bevi,

again, I take the liberty to disagree:

Am 3 Jan 2014 um 06:48 schrieb Chagnon | PubCom < <EMAIL REMOVED> >:

> Olaf wrote: "this is not how most people create documents... Then it's up to
> the tool that saves out the HTML or PDF or . to get the tags right... It's
> only a few developers who have to get the coding right, not the actual
> user."
>
> You're right. Most writers, editors, and other content creators aren't
> tagging their documents.

the tagging is done by the tool used to create the document! The only thing the author has to get right is to use style sheets and built-in features properly:
- heading styles for headings
- list feature for lists
- table feature for tables
and so forth. Besides doing something right one has to do anyway (using the right style sheets doesn't cause any extra work, nor does using the list or table feature in a program like Word or InDesign), there are usually only two pieces of extra work to a document that one might skip otherwise:
- take care of alternate text for images, charts, diagrams etc.
- take care of the metadata (at least enter a good title in the metadata)
Everything else needs to be taken care of by the authoring tool.

And by the way - this is not just a minor aspect: unless tools get it right (or begin to get it right), we will not see widespread production and distribution of accessible documents (beyond document from federal agencies - how often do people read documents from federal agencies, compared to other document types? Aren't those other documents even much more important?), whether HTML, PDF or some other format. On top, putting low level tagging burdens on users is a dramatic waste of resources! Users should be doing intelligent things, and developers of tools should get their act together once, instead of users compensating for suboptimal features in tools millions of times, again and again.


> Because we don't have good enough tools

So what do you think is easier to fix: hundreds of developers, or hundreds of millions of users? Who has an incentive, or could be provided with one (like pressure, money, awareness, proudness, ...)?


Olaf