On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 13:01:42 +0100, Lorna Campbell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Personally I rather like Phil's suggestion that we adopt an approach
>similar to WAI and have different levels of conformance. I'd be very
>keen to hear the SIGs opinion of this suggestion.
>
I hope this doesn't appear to contradict what I said earlier(!) but in my
experience of supporting people with WAI, having 'optional' levels of
compliance in effect means there is a great tendency amongst academic staff
and support staff to work to the lowest level. So people think
they're 'doing' accessibility without really having understood the
reasons/need for greater compliance - or at least it makes life simpler for
them to do the minimum. Levels of compliance are raised when
conditions/systems insist they should be. So using this parallel for UK LOM
would suggest that the community would tend to work with a low level of
mandatory elements unless it was working within a particular framework or
CoP. What sort of CoPs would insist on higher levels of compliance (JISC
funded projects perhaps, particular CoPs with special profiles?)...
It all feels a bit messy and 'messy' and 'interoperability' don't seem
natural companions. Would it not be better to go back to Andy's original
question and just review the need for so many madatory elements within our
community? Then adjust the UK LOM if necessary.
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