

Instructions to work on guide docs

From: Michael Cooper <michaelc@watchfire.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 12:10:40 -0400
Message-ID: <A0666B3C59F1634290FDC88674D87C3205831996@1WFEMAIL.ottawa.watchfire.com>
To: "Team C \(E-mail\)" <public-wcag-teamc@w3.org>

Hi - I know it's a bit scary to do guide documents, and we've assigned a lot out to do. I  thought I'd provide a few suggestions to help you work on them.

First, use the template available at:  http://trace.wisc.edu/wcag_wiki/index.php?title=Guide_doc_template.

If you would like to use the Wiki, you can "edit" the template, copy the source, then  (without saving) go to your guide doc editing screen and paste it in. You can find your  guide doc in the Wiki by following the appropriate link in the Guideline 1.3  <http://trace.wisc.edu/wcag_wiki/index.php?title=Guideline_1.3> or Guideline 4.2  <http://trace.wisc.edu/wcag_wiki/index.php?title=Guideline_4.2> page.

Whether or not you decide to use the wiki, I suggest you do your editing in an environment  that is comfortable to you - word processor or HTML editor or plain text, doesn't matter.  Don't slow down the creative process by worrying about formatting, especially using the  formatting commands of an unfamiliar tool. When you have completed the content, you can go  through and format it, put it into HTML or the wiki or whatever. The same applies to any  links, don't distract yourself by chasing down correct links, you can find them when you're  done.

There are a lot of resources that you can use. Start with the easy ones: definitions,  benefits, and examples already exist in the current WCAG draft  <http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/>. Copy and paste the ones you need. You can also add new ones  of course.

You should also look through the issue summaries for guidelines 1.3 and 4.2 and see if any  of those apply to the Success Criterion you're working on. These summaries are at,  respectively, http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-wcag-teamc/2005Oct/0021.html and  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-wcag-teamc/2005Oct/0017.html. It's also a good  idea to look through comments in the results of the questionnaires for the issues; these are  at, respectively, http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/35422/teamc-2_5/results and  http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/35422/teamc-4_2/results.

Beyond this, remember to focus on what we most vitally need in the short term: 

* Key terms
* Intent
* Sufficient techniques (general and technology-specific)

Everything else - advisory techniques, benefits, additional resources, test cases - is nice  to have but optional. If we have it, great, but if not, we'll live without it. We should not  spend time working on those pieces. We also only need to provide the minimal information to  be understood by an educated audience. For sufficient techniques, if just a title in the  guide doc will be understood, that's all we need. We only need to provide actual worked out  techniques if a) we already have them or b) that truly is necessary for reviewers to  understand what we meant, because the title can't be made clear enough.

If you aren't sure about what to put down for one of those places - take a stab at it. This  will provide one person's interpretation of the guideline and make it much easier to  determine if everybody in the group shares the same interpretation. If not, we'll work that  out in the review process, but we just need the starter content for now.

I hope this is helpful. Thanks in advance for getting your guide docs in by the end of the  week.


--- Signature ---

Michael Cooper
Accessibility Product Manager, Watchfire
1 Hines Rd Suite 200, Kanata, ON  K2K 3C7  Canada
Tel: +1 (613) 599-3888 x4019
Fax: +1 (613) 599-4661
Email: michaelc@watchfire.com
Web: http://www.watchfire.com/
Received on Wednesday, 12 October 2005 16:11:12 GMT
