Hi, Jonathan-
On 22 Jul 2008, at 18:26, Doug Schepers wrote:
As usual, you are twisting the facts to suit your claim.
Your claim was that 20% of people in the UK are functionally
illiterate (I think that figure is high,
Jonathan Chetwynd wrote (on 7/22/08 4:43 PM):
regarding the claim that 20% of people in the UK are functionally
illiterate may I refer you to the very well respected report 'A Fresh
Start' by Lord Moser for the UK Government:
http://www.lifelonglearning.co.uk/mosergroup/
Once again, you've cut quotes short. Misquoting is effectively fabrication.
You imply that I deny the 20% figure, while what I actually said is that
though I've seen conflicting figures, I was willing to grant your claim
for the sake of argument, but thought you were misusing the statistics.
Improving Literacy and Numeracy
A Fresh Start
The report of the working group chaired by Sir Claus Moser.
Chapter 1: The Problem and Our Strategy
1.1 Something like one adult in five in this country is not functionally
literate and far more people have problems with numeracy.
Yes, again, you've cut the quote short. This study actually states:
"Some 7 million adults in England - one in five adults - if given the
alphabetical index to the Yellow Pages, cannot locate the page reference
for plumbers. That is an example of functional illiteracy. It means that
one in five adults has less literacy than is expected of an 11-year-old
child. These figures - based on official surveys - are inevitably
estimates, and may be a little on the high side: but the order of
magnitude is certainly right. [...] One in sixteen adults, if shown the
poster in Figure A, cannot say where the concert is being held."
So, te study itself says pretty much the same thing I said... that the
figures are probably a little high.
Again, you dodge the issue that you claim that these are the same people
who can't use alternate media. Can you offer any evidence to that
claim, or will you again conveniently drop this point in your next email?
I have referred in the past to this report in emails to the www-svg list.
I don't believe that's correct. I searched for references to emails
from you with the keywords "literacy", "illiteracy", "illiterate",
"Moser", "lifelonglearning", "read", and other keywords, but no
references to that study. Perhaps you alluded to it in passing. I've
also read about a UN survey that came to a similar conclusion.
Communication and literacy rely on both reading and writing.
Note that this survey is about "functional literacy", not the ability to
read... it's about the ability to use reading skills to solve daily
problems. The examples in the survey are more than simple reading
tasks, they involve reasoning skills as well. I don't know if these
same people would have an easier or a harder time finding and using
resources on the Web, using a search engine.
Note that this study doesn't discuss that many of the functionally
illiterate may not be native speakers... they may be perfectly
functionally literate in their own culture, but still fail at tasks in
the less familiar UK language and culture. Almost 8% of UK's 60.5
million residents are overseas immigrants, with another approximately
half-million illegal immigrants.
None of this is to downplay the rather dire situation. But the great
majority of these people, contrary to your claim, could use a phone (or
VOIP, if available) or watch a TV (or follow a link to a video), or
benefit from voice browsers. This is the essential question... how are
the needs of these people, vis-à-vis the Web, best met? What are the
specific needs identified. Finally, in what way is the Web most
relevant to these people?
These are tough questions, and honestly, I don't know the answers. You
suggest that it is W3C's mandate and responsibility to devote
substantial resources to solve this problem, based on this statement:
[[
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Points/
W3C's mission is to lead the Web to its full potential, which it does
by developing technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and
tools) that will create a forum for information, commerce, inspiration,
independent thought, and collective understanding.
Today this universe benefits society by enabling new forms of human
communication and opportunities to share knowledge. One of W3C's primary
goals is to make these benefits available to all people, whatever their
hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture,
geographical location, or physical or mental ability.
]]
The key here is the statement on the means we employ to reach those
goals: "developing technologies (specifications, guidelines, software,
and tools)". So, in short... W3C provides a technological foundation
onto which other groups or individuals can build applications and
resources that reach and improve the lives of as many people of wide
variety as possible. There are already organizations that concentrate
on addressing all manner of social ills (e.g., literacy; accessibility;
feeding the poor; education in general; stopping war, crime, and
violence; supporting freedom of expression; etc.), and W3C provides a
forum for those organizations and individuals to come to terms with one
small aspect of their task: technical standards. Don't underestimate
the importance that this plays to the big picture.
You talk in the abstract about wanting us to "engage with this
community" directly. What evidence do you have to suggest that they
want to engage with W3C? (I know my girlfriend gets bored senseless
when I talk about Web standards with other geeks... even other geeks get
bored talking about standards! What rational person would want to spend
time talking about Web standards?) What makes you think W3C (that is,
the Team and the Members) are the best people to engage with that
community directly? If we did spend more time with that community
directly, would we be serving the needs of the larger community, and
accomplishing tasks that we are particularly well-suited for?
No, in my opinion (and this is just my opinion), W3C needs to work with
other agents who represent the wider constituents that you want us to
reach. Those organizations and individuals need experts in technical
standards to help them reach their goals. I wouldn't hire a plumber to
fix the wiring in my house, and I wouldn't hire an electrician to fix a
leaky pipe... they might be able to do it, but they wouldn't do as good
a job and it would take longer. This is kind of a fundamental principle
of society, you know... division of labor.
Current W3C web specifications are being developed by developers, for
developers and the corporations that employ them.
Yup. And also by the non-profits and governments and foundations and
charities that employ them. And for the independent developers that are
interested in coding for other reasons than money, like starting
communities, providing services, or just for fun. And for application
developers who wrap the technical specifications in user interfaces so
that average users who neither know nor care about the technical
underpinnings can do things that do appeal to them, that are useful to them.
Most of my family has probably never heard of HTML, much less RFC2646,
but they all use the Web, and we talk via email.
Regards-
-Doug
