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Thread: Priority lists; multimedia
Number of posts in this thread: 3 (In chronological order)
From: Joe Clark
Date: Sun, Sep 01 2002 3:19PM
Subject: Priority lists; multimedia
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Quoth Emma Jane:
>Does anyone know how checkpoints are assigned to each of the three levels?
Mostly by throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it'll stick.
*Allegedly*, if one fails to meet Priority 1 guidelines, large
numbers of disabled visitors will be *unable* to use your site. Miss
the Priority 2s? Many will have *difficulty* using your site. Lapse
on the 3s? Some undefined number will suffer *inconvenience* using
your site.
The priority listings are good enough, I suppose, though it's true
that ease of implementation is not covered (accesskey and tabindex is
very easy to implement, but they are clearly nice-to-have features,
not necessities). The problem becomes the suggested remedies, which
are almost farcically theoretical and divorced from the lived reality
of Web sites not domiciled at W3.org. Hang out on the various wai-*
mailing lists sometime. These people *do not get out much*, and many
accessibility techniques are merely words to them ("aural
stylesheet," "text description") rather than something they can prove
they've written or actually used. (The fact that it takes two months
of explaining before the WAI changes the neologism "auditory
description" to "audio description" proves they have, in fact, no
experience whatsoever *with* audio description.)
>Recently, however, I've been more and more aware of how hard
>(expensive?) it can be to accomplish Priority One on a site with
>video clips.
You can use decoded Line 21 captions and ordinary audio descriptions
in separate streams. SMIL embedding is simply not necessary. An
unannounced project that has been going strong for nearly a year at
CBC News Online uses decoded Line 21 captions. (That would be my
project, by the way.)
It is now possible to autoconvert (or semiautomatically convert) Line
21 captions into SMIL files, BTW, should one really wish to do that.
--
Joe Clark | = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Accessibility <http://joeclark.org/access/>;
Weblogs and articles <http://joeclark.org/weblogs/>;
<http://joeclark.org/writing/>; | <http://fawny.org/>;
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From: John Foliot - bytown internet
Date: Sun, Sep 01 2002 3:54PM
Subject: RE: Priority lists; multimedia
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> An
> unannounced project that has been going strong for nearly a year at
> CBC News Online uses decoded Line 21 captions. (That would be my
> project, by the way.)
>
> It is now possible to autoconvert (or semiautomatically convert) Line
> 21 captions into SMIL files, BTW, should one really wish to do that.
Come on Joe, URLs to back these up.
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From: Kynn Bartlett
Date: Tue, Sep 03 2002 3:44AM
Subject: Re: Priority lists; multimedia
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At 6:01 PM -0400 9/1/02, Joe Clark wrote:
>*Allegedly*, if one fails to meet Priority 1 guidelines, large
>numbers of disabled visitors will be *unable* to use your site. Miss
>the Priority 2s? Many will have *difficulty* using your site. Lapse
>on the 3s? Some undefined number will suffer *inconvenience* using
>your site.
Right -- that is the official story on what the priorities mean. In
truth, they're highly subjective and very much related to the state of
the web in 1998.
>The priority listings are good enough, I suppose, though it's true
>that ease of implementation is not covered (accesskey and tabindex
>is very easy to implement, but they are clearly nice-to-have
>features, not necessities). The problem becomes the suggested
>remedies, which are almost farcically theoretical and divorced from
>the lived reality of Web sites not domiciled at W3.org.
Yeah, too many of the original WAI documents were based on an "if you
build it, they will come" philosophy by which really clever things were
suggested that didn't work in any known browsers at the time. This made
the WAI guidelines far less practical than they could have been, which
meant that they come across as very pie-in-the-sky. Hopefully WCAG2
will be better.
>Hang out on the various wai-* mailing lists sometime. These people
>*do not get out much*, and many accessibility techniques are merely
>words to them ("aural stylesheet," "text description") rather than
>something they can prove they've written or actually used.
Oh, be nice. :)
Thanks for the comments about multimedia accessibility, Joe -- something
I know little about myself. I am looking forward to your book.
--Kynn
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Kynn Bartlett < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > http://kynn.com
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain http://idyllmtn.com
Next Book: Teach Yourself CSS in 24 http://cssin24hours.com
Kynn on Web Accessibility ->> http://kynn.com/+sitepoint
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