Re: Accessibility vs. consideration X: how to handle

At 02:39 AM 1/2/2001 , Marti wrote:
>It seems like what we are reaching for here is something along the lines of
>the "undue burden" clause in the ADA.  The ADA defines undue burden in terms
>of a % of cost and allows some exceptions for things like historic sites.
>Can we classify the "consideration X" issues into a few broad categories
>like:
>      undue risk to intellectual property
>      more than x% of the total cost of the website
>      .......

Instead of that, I think we could just simply note potential
problems in the relevant techniques when we know there is
potential for such.  I think that's a more intellectually honest
way of doing this, and will increase (not decrease) the credibility
of our document.

For example:

      Use CSS2's <blah blah> and <blah blah> features for controlling
      layout without the use of tables or frames.

      User Agent Note:  At the current time (November 2001), user
      agent support for positioning CSS is spotty; it is most reliable
      on <browser> and <browser>.  Version <n> of <browser> and earlier,
      and version <k> of <browser> and earlier do not support CSS-P at
      all.  You may want to provide a legacy version [defn link] for
      these browsers.

That is, assuming that we know of these potential problems.  I think
in many cases we -do-, and withholding that knowledge does a
disservice to those who would use our documents.

--Kynn

-- 
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                    http://kynn.com/
Sr. Engineering Project Leader, Reef-Edapta       http://www.reef.com/
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet   http://www.idyllmtn.com/
Contributor, Special Edition Using XHTML     http://kynn.com/+seuxhtml
Unofficial Section 508 Checklist           http://kynn.com/+section508

Received on Tuesday, 2 January 2001 12:11:02 UTC