[Sigia-l] Re: New Web Accessibility & IA OrganizationinBoston (Listera)

[Listera]

"Anne Miller" wrote:
> As Neil suggests no data/information lives in a vacuum - it has its own
> context which includes a) the phenomena that it reflects, b) the rationale
> for collecting it in the first place, c) the means by which it is collected,
> and stored, d) its the anticipated use e) its relationship to other
> information. All of these points (including the cross over with Neil's) are
> levels of abstraction.

So? 

Info/data at its raw level is not our domain: we don't create it, we don't
alter it, etc. To go back to my Dow Jones example, we don't determine the
constituents of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, we don't generate the raw
data, etc. We design interfaces, categories, workflows, navigations, etc.,
in the form of online applications at a level of abstraction well above the
raw numbers.

> So where's the argument?

There's no argument, if you somehow don't understand the example above
there's not much else I can add.
 
> So you abstract information into templates? So what levels of abstraction do
> the templates represent and how; what/who informs these. You dont change the
> raw data/info - you just value add to it by categorising it according to
> levels of abstraction. If this is what you do then you are creating content.

No, I am not.

> You are imposing semantic meaning through levels of abstraction represented
> in a template. As you have rightly point out raw data/info is raw
> data/info - it has to be abstracted. Abstraction is NOT a property of raw
> data it is a property of human agency (purpose, intention, process, ie
> context) - and you are not just designing a template you are building a
> semantic framework whether you do it lorum ipsum or not.

I have no idea what you are saying here. In a circular fashion, you seem to
agree that we don't "serve" raw data but put it in context (through our
value add in terms of categorization, etc), which means we are not really
creating content merely contextualizing it. But further above you argue that
we are creating new content when we abstract. I'll leave it to you to sort
all this out.

> The original question applies - so who decides what that framework is?

We do, frameworks are part of our business.

> And is the abstraction framework that you embed in your template intelligible
> to people with accessibility issues.

Is this a trick question?

Ziya
Nullius in Verba