RE: Section 508 -Reply

Gregg,
I appologize for not getting back to you sooner, but here's
the deal.  Your comment in the Speech to Speech
proceeding was technically late, because the new rules only
went into effect on July 1.  That's why the program was still
set to click over to the next date at 5:30.   However, I had
anticipated the changeover and posted the new rules in
advance.  I talked to Magalie Salas about this situation,
which also affected 3 other filers.  Because of the incorrect
information which I had posted, she determined that your
and the three other commenters would be considered timely
filed.  

Whew!  Now my list is only 999,999 items long!

BTW, I talked to Al Dinsmore some more about accessible
forms.  
cheers,
Sheryl

>>> "Gregg Vanderheiden" <po@trace.wisc.edu> 07/27/98
08:39pm >>>
Perhaps this is where W3C guidelines come in....   setting a
benchmark for what should be considered accessible.

Gregg


-- ------------------------------
Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D.
Professor - Human Factors
Dept of Ind. Engr. - U of Wis.
Director - Trace R & D Center
Gv@trace.wisc.edu, http:// trace.wisc.edu /
FAX 608/262-8848
For a list of our listserves send "lists" to listproc@
trace.wisc.edu

-----Original Message-----
From:	w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org
[mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Kynn
Bartlett
Sent:	Tuesday, June 30, 1998 6:06 PM
To:	love26@gorge.net
Cc:	w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject:	Re: Section 508

At 08:22 p.m. 06/26/98 -0700, William Loughborough wrote:
>Section 508 of the Rehab Act requires that federal
agencies not
buy
>inaccessible.  It's not much of a reach for that to apply to
Web
>Authoring Tools *and their output*.  If a word processor or
whatever has
>the "facility" to produce inaccessible code as a by-product
of
its "save
>as markup" feature, it should not be acceptable for federal
purchase??

Okay, so I'll be a federal agency.  Please define what
"accessible"
and "inaccessible" HTML code is, so I can know what to
buy?

This is part of the problem with trying to rely on laws passed
by
non-technical people that will be applied by non-technical
people
to
a technical issue.  You and I can figure out what
"inaccessible"
means, but what does it mean in practice?

Is an editor "accessible" if it provides automatic ALT
attributes
(such as ALT="image34.jpg 3752 bytes")?  What if it
"provides
support
for ALT attributes"?  Or does it have to _require_ ALT
attributes
be used?  (And how does that mesh with autogenerated
ALTs?)

You see, you and I can't even define what "accessible"
means, let
alone expect a government bureaucrat to make that
decision.  If
someone asks the maker of <X> brand of web software, be
that
Microsoft or SoftQuad or Netscape or anyone else, "Does
this
soft-
ware produce accessible code?" they will say "Yes, it does",
for
whatever definition fits their product.

And so we're back to square one -- except that now the
bureaucrat
thinks she's doing a good job on web accessibility, even if
she's
not!

Received on Tuesday, 28 July 1998 10:00:06 UTC