- From: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>
- Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 14:40:04 +1100 (EST)
- To: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
I agree with Gregory's points: one of the fundamental tenets of the guidelines is that it is possible to serve generic content which can then be transformed by the client software to meet the requirements of the user, possibly with assistance from author-supplied style sheets if these are supplied and applicable. Advising content providers to customise their material to meemeet the (perceived or actual) needs of specific communities of readers would amount, in effect, to a transfer of control over the presentation of content from users to authors, whereas the former, rather than the latter, are in the best position to understand their own needs and to ensure that client software is configured appropriately so thatappropriate stylistic preferences and user interface conventions are applied. This is only possible, however, if structurally-oriented markup with explicit semantics is issued by the server and the content itself exhibits the characteristic of medium redundancy (through textual equivalents etc.) as mandated by the guidelines.
Received on Wednesday, 17 November 1999 22:40:51 UTC