If I could walk that WAI I wouldn't need the guidelines

[j4]

Since the Understanding document ['Understanding WCAG 2.0'] is more than double the size of what it purports to explain, this itself may indicate a problem with WCAG 2.

Is it just me, or is an exposition of something often longer than what it's explaining? Particularly (one might even argue necessarily) when you're translating from technical specifications into more generally-accessible language, i.e. from high to low information density?

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

People don't read documentation because they are lazy, no matter how appropriately it's pitched...

[j4.livejournal.com]

Also, sometimes, because they don't know where to find the documentation. Admittedly that can sometimes be overcome by a concerted effort of anti-laziness, but if the documentation's hidden in a disused lavatory the X: drive, or the "Misc" section of your wiki, then it's not much use to man or leopard.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

That's certainly true; indeed just the other day I responded to someone's suggestion that we write a generatekey man page by pointing them at Devel.GenerateKey2ManPage. Without being able to peer into the person's head I couldn't say for sure but I suspect the problem was more that it hadn't occurred to them that the document existed than that they hadn't tried to look for it. But long experience shows that very often people come to the author before trying to read the docs even when they have good reason to believe they exist...