Re: stab at betaw3

Hi Catherine,

Thank you for sharing your perspective.
(Yes, we welcome your comments to the EOWG list. We also encourage people to remember that there is often significant background behind discussions, draft documents, etc. that they might not be aware of.)

The text referred to by Mr. Loughborough is his personal opinion posted on his website. It does not necessarily reflect consensus of EOWG, nor WAI staff. I've asked him to make that clear on the page.

We did have an interesting discussion about this issue today in the EOWG teleconference.  (If you read teleconference minutes, please remember that they may not accurately reflect what was said.) Some people support the idea of one of the Accessibility pages on the W3C website focusing on universality of the Web, to get away from the deficit model of disability. We did not come to any consensus on change of approach or wording.

While we will draft text and consider different approaches, we are far from settling on anything. We look forward to further comments once the Working Group has developed a stable draft of the new page.

Best regards,
~Shawn Henry, EOWG Chair


-----
Shawn Lawton Henry
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
e-mail: shawn@w3.org
phone: +1.617.395.7664
about: http://www.w3.org/People/Shawn/






catherine wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Although I am not a member of E&O as such, I do follow your work through 
> the mailing list so I would like to comment on this if it is permissible.
> 
> Concerning the text that was referred to by Mr. Loughborough, is this 
> the direction that WAI is going to take on Web accessibility ? Is it to 
> be understood it is being considered that people with disabilities will 
> be evacuated from the text ? I note however that "older people" have 
> been left in. Not that I mind that last part, but I am wondering why an 
> organisation who's primary mandate is to ensure that the Web is 
> accessible to people with disabilities would decide to drop that 
> dimension from its definition of Web accessibility but keep a reference 
> to older people.
> 
> Additionally, I do not believe that Mr. Berners-Lee said "The power of 
> the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone is essential to 
> assure "One Web: Everyone/Everything/Everywhere/Always Connected."" The 
> original quote, which is on WAI's Web site, makes that very clear and I 
> wonder how WAI can change history like this.
> 
> I apologise if I am out of order but I feel quite strongly about this.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> 
> Catherine
> 
>

Received on Friday, 14 August 2009 18:44:57 UTC