Re: [Rswg] [rfc-i] Report: Accessibility of RFCs

[Nico Williams <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, Nov 06, 2023 at 11:44:41PM +0100, Toerless Eckert wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 06, 2023 at 11:08:20PM +0100, Alexis Rossi wrote:
> > Yes, that’s the goal - artwork is not normative. I would still like people with visual impairments to be able to read the entire RFC though if they choose.
> 
> The most easy example to the opposite of course are any tables
> to create IANA registries. Which of course are also the type of
> craphics that i'd expect any screen reader to actually make easily sense of.

The good news about tables in IANA sections is that once the RFC is
published then those are no longer that important since IANA will
publish its own.

> It gets more complicated when you go to the ASCII art with which we specify
> the most important normative aspects of protocols: protocol headers.
> E.g.: start with IP (rfc791) and any on-the-wire protocol header RFC
> from there on.

Ahh, good point.  I was thinking more of architecture diagrams, or the
kinds of diagrams you see in PKIX RFCs.

> There are graphics that describe how architecture elements are related
> to each other. I'd call those normative.

I'd expect those to be more informative than normative.  But indeed,
nothing precludes all figures being normative.

> But in summary: Yes, a lot of graphics in RFCs are normative.

Yes.  I stand corrected.

Nico
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