Re: Problems with OTACS-2

At 8:04 PM -0400 2001/10/26, Anne Pemberton wrote:
>>    *  eg. site is accessible only once stylesheets have been rendered.
>>       What happens if stylesheets are turned off?  Will there be a
>>       clause "...if tools are turned off the site must still be
>>       functional..."?
>
>I think the intent is to organize the priorities by who is 
>responsible for what. If someone has stylesheets, why would they 
>turn them off ?

The most common reason would be if someone has a specific disability
by which the default presentation is inaccessible -- maybe it's too
small, for example.  Such a person would create a user-defined style
sheet -- which is a VITAL part of the CSS specification -- which would
override user styles.  This is supported in Internet Explorer and Opera,
and somewhat in Netscape 6.

>Perhaps I'm not seeing the big picture, but if I want to see a page, 
>and it requires a free plug-in, I would not complain about the site 
>if I chose not to download the free stuff.

There are some platforms which some people use -- such as Linux --
where the content might only be available if you are using proprietary
formats where the "free plug-in" is only available on different platforms.
For example, everything seems to be available to Windows users, but not
necessarily for Macintosh or Unix users.   So someone might very well
complain because they are denied acess.

>         The other side of the coin is that in the case of Dyslexia, 
>it is presumed that the user should have a speech reader which is 
>NOT free, and not provided by good site authors who generally tend 
>to put a link to download the plug-in when their pages need it.

What?  Those users should just use Macintosh which has the built in
ability to read text out loud.

Now, see, I'm not REALLY arguing that, I'm just pointing out that such
arguments are very easy to make but very problematic in practice.

>>    *
>>       eg. PDFs can be rendered "accessible" (according to Adobe).
>>       However the W3C does not approve of PDFs as the only means of
>>       content transmission because it relies on a plugin. Under OTACS-2,
>>       it appears PDFs would be accessible. Under WCAG 1.0 they are not.
>
>The Adobe plug-in, unlike a Speech Reader, is free and easily 
>downloaded and installed. If Adobe works with all ATs, why not 
>expect the user to have it? Is this not so everywhere? Are we being 
>to US-Centric?

Does it work with all ATs?  Or is that the correct metric to use here?

--Kynn

-- 
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com>
Technical Developer Liaison
Reef North America
Accessibility - W3C - Integrator Network
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Received on Saturday, 27 October 2001 12:11:06 UTC