All Your Sheep Belong To Us...
With the mass telling off we received last week regarding our communication skills we were then told we had to conform to the following WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) Guidelines - 1.1, 2.2, 4.2, 13.1, 14.1 and 14.3.
I thought I was hitting most of these guidelines, perhaps 1.1 needed a little work, and 14.1 is a mine field, but on the whole I was relatively happy with my 'learning journal'. I spell check it before posting, have the date and time set up for posts, have added a list to the first years journals, and have meaningful titles.... Or do I?
As Craig mentioned in my previous post my idea of a 'meaningful title' is perhaps different to the user. Using my previous post as an example, my title of "Somewhere A Clock Is Ticking" tells the user nothing about what is to come in the blog, and to the average Joe reading my blog will cause little or no interest in them. Although I know what I was getting at, perhaps no one else really did.
Take the title of this blog for instance, to the average Joe this title will have as much meaning to this post as any of my other titles, yet to me it has a lot less meaning. I guess the point I'm trying to get at is that one of the main aims of our 'learning journals' is to provide evidence for our PDP unit which in turn is to show our understanding of the industry, jobs, etc. This being said, I need to start thinking about the end user a lot more and how everything I do, even minute things such as blog post titles, may affect them.
You know, it's amazing how much you learn when it's meant to be your week off...
11 comments:
I'm glad to see you've taken my comments into account Craig.
Still, I think all of us has a long way to go to meet 14.1 properly. The most useful resource I've found for meeting 14.1 is the comprehension techniques buried deep inside the content accessibility guidelines:
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-CORE-TECHS/#comprehension
Will you be writing a follow up post that explains how you are meeting each point?
Eventually I hope to do that yes. I still have a lot to do in the mean time however (taking notes on the usability testing handbook, preparing for the presentation, etc.) so didn't have time to write an extended post about meeting each point.
As we have mentioned in class many times before, I think the hardest thing about 14.1 is defining who it is we are aiming to write for. Although most of the people who read our blogs are probably quite technical, they are a very public source and so almost anyone can read them.
You’d probably need a degree in English to meet 14.1, as it is so complex when you start looking into it.
An example: The target audience could include the first year student, potential students and a whole hose of other people. Wouldn’t this remove any technical terms from your posts? Surely to show D3 in the learning outcome would imply that you would have to use industry standard terminology. But how can you do this when it may not be suitable for the target audience? Wouldn’t you constantly have to set the context of every point you made so that they could understand it?
This is just one tiny argument in a potential torrent of other arguments. You could really get pedantic about it, but then it would be so dumbed down it would not be comprehensible anyway. As long as you can argue why it is suitable for the target audience, I think you will be ok.
It seems to be a sign of our times that we have to neutralise everything so that the less intelligent can understand it. I’m all for making things easy to understand, but I think there is a limit as to how far you can go. Just an opinion.
I've been wrestling with 14.1 myself for a considerable amount of time. Who is the arbiter of 'the clearest and simplest language appropriate'?
However there are some useful tips in the extended guidance section on the WAI site. Some of it just makes for effective writing per se - in whatever medium.
If it helps, this is the direction I gave to the first years about your journal audience:
Primary Target Audience: Professional educators: John, the Edexcel Moderator and myself.
Secondary Target Audience: Industry professionals: potential employers.
Tertiary Target Audience: Your colleagues: first and second year.
But ... and it's a big but ... there's a valuable skill in being able to explain complex issues in a simple way. For example, with a technopobic client.
Anyway, I'm trying to award myself Conformance Level ‘A’ on the HND website, but am being hindering by my own interpretation of 14.1. Would any of you care to give me some feedback on the 'clearness and simplicity' of the language used on the site's information pages?
Of course, that should say 'technophobic client'.
Similar to Julians point, I think it all depends on who the target audience is. It's being mentioned in class before that the target audience is FE students and so they will have some level of education and knowledge of more technical issues.
Saying this however the current HND site does seem to be very simple and uncomplicated.
Looking at it again now do the abbreviations of CD (Compact Disc), etc. need to be expanded?
On reflection only one of the target audiences is FE students, because we do recruit a number of 'mature' students as well. I guess the age range is anything from 17/18 right the way through to 40/50+.
This perfectly illustrates the dilemma of writing [or designing] for multiple audiences, and why things are usually 'dumbed down' to the lowest common denominator. Not something I'm very happy about, but it seems to be happening in every walk of life these days.
Your 'CD' observation is correct ... but it falls under Priority 3 [Conformance Level "Triple-A"] ... go figure!
Ah of course, I was just thinking it was a standard we have to conform to on our journals forgetting all points aren't priority 1.
Dumbing content down does seem to be the easiest way to conform to the guidelines, though dumbing things down can then cause problems, such as on the HND site it is difficult to explain the different aspects of the course without being at all technical.
I'd say even the mature students would have some level of technical expertise however, I can't see a 40+ year old just one day deciding to do a HND Interactive Media course for any other reason than to expand on existing knowledge. Though I could be wrong...
I've been pondering over 14.1 for a long while too. To be honest, I think it's far too subjective of a goal to even be in there, but we have to play the cards we are dealt.
My interpretation of it is that as long as your content is suitable for your target audience(s) then you are meeting 14.1.
There is also the part of 14.1 that is about keeping the discourse of your content simple too. For this I usually use newspapers as an example. You need a clear heading stating what the content to follow will be about, then an introductory paragraph stating what you will be talking about. This is something the BBC News website does very well.
But alas, it's all down to whether you think it's suitable, which completely contradicts the whole purpose of the goal.
This is where 14.1 started. Try to follow the thread through to the end!
So i was curious about your title. what is the meaning "all your sheep belong to us"
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