> WAI Web site redesign project

Requirements for Overview Pages for WAI Site

Version: 2004.10.16

on this page: Purpose | Audience | Format | Planned list

Purpose of overview pages

The purpose of the Overview pages is to provide:

• Introduction to
  • technical reports (WCAG, UAAG, ATAG, techniques, etc.)
  • important basic concepts with links to resources on the WAI site (What is Web Accessibility?)
  • differently-formatted documents (e.g., on-line slides)
• Navigation to related documents

Note: One motivation for the Overview pages is that we can't change or add anything to the Technical Report pages, which are the guidelines, techniques, and such (under www.w3.org/TR/). For example, we cannot add navigation. The Overview pages for the guidelines and slides are to meet issues that usability testing confirmed, including:

• users were overwhelmed with the /TR/ documents and uncomfortable with all the front matter (multiple version links, abstract, status)
• users had trouble getting dumped into a /TR/ document without really knowing where they were going, and thus where they were
• once in a /TR/ document, users had trouble getting back to the WAI sub-site

Audience for overview pages

The audience for the text of the Overview pages are people who are new to the topic. This includes people who are brand new to Web accessibility overall, or are familiar with one area of accessibility and not others (e.g., they know WCAG but not UAAG or ATAG). Therefore, it is particularly important that the Overview pages:

• Use easy-to-understand language and terminology
• Are geared toward novices
• Are short, preferably less than 2 printed pages

A second primary audience for the Overview pages is people navigating to the documents. Therefore, it must also be easy to get to the document links without having to wade through all the text.

Format for overview pages

The basic format for most overview pages is:

• <h1>[written out (XYZ)] Overview
  • <h2>[XYZ] Documents
  • <h2>What is [XYZ]
  • <h2>Who is [XYZ] for
  • <h2>What is in [XYZ]
    • <h3>Technical document format
  • <h2>Who develops [XYZ]

Planned overview pages

The following are basically cover pages for W3C Technical Report documents and navigation pages to related documents:

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Overview (changelog)
  • Navigating WCAG 1.0 Guidelines and Techniques Documents (changelog)
  • Introduction to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Working Draft Documents (changelog)
• User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) Overview
• Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) Overview
• Notes on Accessibility Features of W3C Technologies (early draft) [on hold - possibly just have links in WCAG Overview]
• Accessibility Evaluation Language (ERL) Overview [possible doc for later]

The following would follow a similar format:

• Introduction to Web Accessibility (requirements and changelog)
  • Interdependent Components of Web Accessibility (requirements and changelog for components)
• Overview of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Slides (old draft of requirements and changelog)

Document Information

Editor: Shawn Lawton Henry. Last updated $Date: 2004/10/18 21:31:04 $ by $Author: shawn $