----- Original Message ----- From: "Kynn Bartlett" <kynn@reef.com> > Policies of these kind scare me because they represent a fundamental > misunderstanding of what we're all about, which suggests that we > (WAI participants) may not be doing our jobs effectively. It's really not so much a fundamental misunderstanding as an under-understanding. > We need to make sure that people with a wide variety of disabilities > are "visible" in whatever we produce. I think we're doing that now, > but if so, we still need to look at why misinterpretations happen > anyway. Here's my quick analysis of why WCAG is associated with the blind: - Blind advocacy groups are among the most prominent supporters of WCAG, particularly respecting commercial web sites; - Visually-impaired users stand to benefit the most from WCAG-compliant sites; - More needs to be done for visually-impaired users in WCAG 1 than any other category; - The checkpoints relating to vision are most often normative, and thus more compatible with law. And why other disability categories are generally ignored: - The progression of web development has meant text before sound, and as a result hearing-impaired users are impacted less often; - Motor-related disabilities are generally more extensively supported by assistive technologies than by content modification; - Cognitive disabilities are nearly impossible to articulate in the time necessary to "sell" accessibility; - Disabilities not related to vision and hearing in particular are not understood, and therefore, it is difficult to prove value to an otherwise uninterested party. I agree that the bias toward vision exists. Still, I can't fault the framers of WCAG for that bias. - m _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.comReceived on Tuesday, 21 August 2001 22:29:44 GMT
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