[Irl-dean] Equal Citizens: Proposals for Core Elements of Disability Legislation

[bdelaney at nda.ie]

Again thank you for your constructive and helpful comments. 

To date the NDA website policy has been to provide documents in both PDF 
and RTF. Due to resource limitations it is not always possible to publish 
accessible HTML versions with the given timeframe. 

However as you pointed out plain text files are smaller in file size and 
more portable than RTF. 

As such do you advise publication of all future documents in PDF and plain 
text only or publication in all 3 formats (i.e. PDF, RFT and TXT)? Finally 
do RTF's offer any advantages over plain text files to users of screen 
readers (such as better denotation of page structure through headings 
etc.)?

Thanks for your help

Regards


Brenda Delaney
ICT Accessibility Coordinator

The Irish NDA IT Accessibility Guidelines version1.1 are available at 
http://accessIT.nda.ie

National Disability Authority
25 Clyde Road, Dublin 4

Tel:  01 608 0400      Fax: 01 660 9935    Web: www.nda.ie




Barry McMullin <mcmullin at eeng.dcu.ie>
Sent by: irl-dean-admin at list.eeng.dcu.ie
02/05/2003 11:49
Please respond to irl-dean
 
        To:     irl-dean at list.eeng.dcu.ie
        cc: 
        Subject:        Re: [Irl-dean] Equal Citizens: Proposals for Core 
Elements of Disability Legislation


On Fri, 2 May 2003 bdelaney at nda.ie wrote:

> A Rich Text Version of Equal Citizens: Proposals for Core Elements of 
> Disability Legislation is now available on the NDA website at:
[...]

Hi Brenda -

Thanks for this prompt response.  I genuinely appreciate your
efforts to improve matters.

But ... rtf is at most a limited improvement.  It is admittedly a
lot smaller in download than pdf (which is good).  But as far as
that goes, plain text is smaller still and is a good deal more
portable.

The really desirable electronic version is one which is based on
open, portable, standards, and provides high quality structural
markup.  That generally means HTML - but only if the HTML has
been authored properly (whether directly, or indirectly through
transformation or high level authoring tools).  So, in the case
in question, it would be HTML which is valid, uses appropriate
structural markup for headings etc. and has appropriate hypertext
links - especially for navigation within the document (from TOC
to sections; and from text to notes and back).  rtf provides none
of that.

The NDA guidelines (derived, of course, from the W3C guidelines)
say this:

  http://accessit.nda.ie/guideline_1_69.html

  "Use W3C technologies when they are available and appropriate
  for a task and use the latest versions when supported."

Neither pdf nor rtf are W3C technologies and therefore are
appropriate only in a secondary role (i.e., where no relevant W3C
technology is available or appropriate).  So, for example, it is
entirely appropriate and helpful to provide pdf and rtf versions
as *alternatives* to primary HTML versions (specifically to
facilitate high quality printing).  But neither pdf nor rtf is
appropriate as a primary or sole format.

Again, I want to emphasise that I appreciate your interest and
concern, and I am sure that you want to do the "right" thing
here.  But it is clearly very important that the NDA be seen to
be an exemplar of its own guidelines; so I hope you will take
these comments as positive and constructive in helping you to do that.

Best regards,

- Barry.

-- 
Barry McMullin
http://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~mcmullin/




_______________________________________________
Irl-dean mailing list
Irl-dean at list.eeng.dcu.ie
http://list.eeng.dcu.ie/mailman/listinfo/irl-dean



"The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it 
is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material.  Any review,
retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance 
upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is
prohibited.  If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the
material from any computer.  It is the policy of the National Disability Authority to 
disallow the sending of offensive material and should you consider that the material 
contained in this message is offensive you should contact the sender immediately".
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://list.universaldesign.ie/pipermail/ceud-ict/attachments/20030502/637848d0/attachment.html